Tropical Africa 



J^s 



TROPICAL AFRICA 



BY 

HENRY DKUMMOND, LLJX, F.R.S.E. 

Author of " Natural Law in the Spiritual World." 



i » 



NEW TORK 

JOHN B. ALDEX, PUBLISHER 

1890 



.Hz 



JUL 20 \929 

American Univers- 



CO NT ENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 
THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA : THE RIVERS 

ZAMBESI AND SHIRE ,7 

CHAPTER II. 

THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY : LAKES SHIRWA AND 

NYASSA 22 

CHAPTER III. 

THE ASPECT OF THE HEART OF AFRICA I THE COUNTRY AND 

PEOPLE 35 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA : ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE. 45 

CHAPTER V. 

wanderings on the nyassa-tanganyika plateau : a 
traveller's diary , , 57 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE WHITE ANT I A THEORY ....... 77 

CHAPTER VII. 

MIMICRY : THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS . . . .94 

CHAPTER VIII. 

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 106 

CHAPTER IX. 

A POLITICAL WARNING 117 

CHAPTER X. 

A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE 130 



PREFACE. 

It is the genial tax of literature upon Travel that 
those who have explored the regions of the uncivilised 
should open their bag of wonders before the world 
and celebrate their return to clothing in three or four 
volumes and a map. This exaction, in the nature of 
things, must shortly abolish itself. 

As a minor traveller, whose assets are few, I have 
struggled to evade even this obligation, but having re- 
cently had to lecture on African subjects to various 
learned and unlearned Societies in England and 
America, it has been urged upon me that a few of the 
lecture-notes thrown into popular form might be use- 
ful as a general sketch of East Central Africa. Great 
books of travel have had their day. But small books, 
with the larger features of a country lightly sketched, 
and just enough of narrative to make you feel that 
you are really there, have a function in helping the 
imagination of those who have not breath enough to 
keep up with the great explorers. 

The publication of " The White Ant " and < ; Mim- 
icry " has been already forestalled by one of the 
monthly magazines ; and the " Geological Sketch " is 
rescued, and duly dusted, from the archives of the 
British Association. If the dust of science has been 
too freely shaken from the other chapters, the sciem 
tific reader will overlook it for the sake of an over- 
worked public which has infinite trouble in getting it- 
self mildly instructed and entertained without being 



PREFACE. 

disheartened by the heavy pomp of technical expres- 
sion. 

If anything in a work of this class could pretend to 
a serious purpose, I do not conceal that, in addition to 
the mere desire to inform, a special reason exists just 
now for writing about Africa — a reason so urgent that 
I excuse myself with difficulty for introducing so 
grave a problem in so slight a setting. The reader 
who runs his eye over the " Heart-Disease of Africa" 
will discover how great the need is for arousing afresh 
that truer interest in the Dark Centinent which since 
Livingstone's time has almost died away. To many 
modern travellers Africa is simply a country to be ex- 
plored ; to Livingstone it was a land to be pitied and 
redeemed. And recent events on Lake Nyassa have 
stirred a new desire in the hearts of those who care for 
native Africa that " the open sore of the world " 
should have a last and decisive treatment at the hands 
of England. 

Henry Drummond. 



TEOPICAL AFEIOA. 



THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF 

AFRICA. 

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE. 

Three distinct Africas are known to the modern 
world — North Africa, where men go for health; South 
Africa, where they go for money ; and Central Africa, 
where they go for adventure. The first, the old 
Africa of Augustine and Carthage, every one knows 
from history ; the geography of the second, the Africa 
of the Zulu and the diamond, has been taught us 
by two Universal Educators — War and the Stock- 
Exchange ; but our knowledge of the third, the Africa 
of Livingstone and Stanley, is still fitly symbolized 
by the vacant look upon oar maps which tells how 
long this mysterious land has kept its secret. 

Into the heart of this mysterious Africa I wish to 
take you with me now. And let me mangify my 
subject by saying at once that it is a wonderful thing 
to see. It is a wonderful thing to start from the civil- 
ization of Europe, pass up these mighty rivers, and 
work your way into that unknown land — work your 
way alone, and on foot, mile after mile, month after 
month, among strange birds and beasts and plants 
and insects, meeting tribes which have no name, speak- 
ing tongues which no man can interpret, till you have 
reached its secret heart, and stood where white man 



8 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

has never trod before. It is a wonderful thing to 
look at this weird world of human beings — half ani- 
mal half children, wholly savage and wholly heathen ; 
and to turn and come back again to civilization before 
the impressions have had time to fade, and while the 
myriad problems of so strange a spectacle are still 
seething in the mind. It is an education to see this 
sight — an education in the meaning and history of 
man. To have been here is to have lived before 
Menes. It is to have watched the dawn of evolution. 
It is to have the great moral and social problems 
of life, of anthropology, of ethnology, and even of 
theology, brought home to the imagination in the 
most new and startling light. 

On the longest day of a recent summer — midwinter 
therefore in the tropics — I left London. A long rail- 
way run across France, Switzerland, and Italy brings 
one in a day or two to the Mediterranean. Cross- 
ing to Alexandria, the traveller strikes across Egypt 
over the Nile, through the battlefield of Tel-el-Kebir, 
to the Red Sea, steams down its sweltering length 
to Aden, tranships, and, after three lifetimes of 
deplorable humiliation in the south-west Monsoons, 
terminates his suffering's at Zanzibar. 

Zanzibar is the focus of all East African explora- 
tion. No matter where you are going in the interior, 
you must begin at Zanzibar. Oriental in its appear- 
ance, Mohammedan in its religion, Arabian in its 
morals, this cesspool of wickedness is a fit capital 
for the Dark Continent. But Zanzibar is Zanzibar 
simply because it is the only apology for a town on 
the whole coast. An immense outfit is required to 
penetrate this shopless and foodless land, and here 
only can the traveller make up his caravan. The 
ivory and slave trades have made caravaning a pro- 
fession, and everything the explorer wants is to be 
had in these bazaars, from a tin of sardines to a 
repeating rifle. Here these black villains, the porters, 
the necessity and the despair of travellers, the scum 



THE MATER-ROUTE TO THE IIEART OP AFRICA. 9 

of old slave gangs, and the fugitives from justice from 
every tribe, congregate for hire. And if there is one 
thing on which African travellers are for once agreed, 
it is that for laziness, ugliness, stupidness, and wicked- 
ness, these men are not to be matched on any con- 
tinent in the world. Their one strong point is that 
they will engage themselves for the Victoria Nyanza 
or for the Grand Tour of the Tanganyika with as 
little ado as a Chamounix guide volunteers for the 
Jardin ; but this singular avidity is mainly due to 
the fact that each man cherishes the hope of running 
away at the earliest opportunity. Were it only to 
avoid requiring to employ these gentlemen, having 
them for one's sole company month after month, 
seeing them transgress every commandment in turn 
before your eyes — you yourself being powerless to 
check them except by a wholesale breach of the 
sixth — it would be worth while to seek another route 
into the heart of Africa. 

But there is a much graver objection to the Zan- 
zibar route to the interior. Stanley started by this 
route on his search for Livingstone, two white men 
with him ; he came back without them. Cameron 
set out by the same path to cross Africa with two 
companions; before he got to Tanganyika he was 
alone. The Geographical Society's late expedition, 
under Mr. Keith Johnstone, started from Zanzibar 
with two Europeans; the hardy and accomplished 
leader fell within a couple of months. These expe- 
ditions have all gone into the interior by this one 
fatal way, and probably every second man, by fever 
or by accident, has left his bones to bleach along 
the road. Hitherto there has been no help for it. 
The great malarious coast-belt must be crossed, and 
one had simply to take his life in his hands and go 
through with it. 

But now there is an alternative. There is a rival 
route into the interior, which, though it is not with- 
out its dark places too, will probably yet become the 



10 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

great highway from the East to Central Africa. 
Let me briefly sketch it : 

Africa, speaking generally, is a vast, ill-formed 
triangle. It has no peninsulas; it has almost no 
islands or bays or fjords. But three great inlets, three 
mighty rivers piercing it to the very heart, have been 
allocated by a kind Nature, one to each of its solid 
sides. On the north is the river of the past, flow- 
ing through Egypt, as Leigh Hunt says, " like some 
grave, mighty thought threading a dream"; on the 
west, the river of the future, the not less mysterious 
Congo ; and on the east the little known Zambesi. 

The physical features of this great continent are 
easily grasped. From the coast a low scorched plain, 
reeking with malaria, extends inland in unbroken 
monotony for two or three hundred miles. This is 
succeeded by mountains slowly rising into a plateau 
some 2000 or 3000 feet high ; and this, at some hun- 
dreds of miles distance, forms the pedestal for a second 
plateau, as high again. This last plateau, 4000 to 
5000 feet high, may be said to occupy the whole of 
Central Africa. It is only on the large scale, how- 
ever, that these are to be reckoned plateaux at all. 
When one is upon them he sees nothing but moun- 
tains and valleys and plains of the ordinary type, 
covered for the most part with forest. 

I have said that Nature has supplied each side of 
Africa with one great river. By going some hundreds 
of miles southward along the coast from Zanzibar the 
traveller reaches the mouth of the Zambesi. Liv- 
ingstone sailed up this river once, and about a hun- 
dred miles from its mouth discovered another river 
twisting away northwards among the mountains. 
The great explorer was not the man to lose such a 
chance of penetrating the interior. He followed this 
river up, and after many wanderings found himself 
on the shores of a mighty lake. The river is named 
the Shire, and the lake — the existence of which was 
quite unknown before, is Lake Nyassa. Lake Nyassa 



THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA. 11 

is 350 miles long ; so that, with the Zambesi, the Shire*, 
and this great lake, we have the one thing required 
to open up East Central Africa— a water-route to the 
interior. But this is not all. Two hundred and fifty 
miles from the end of Lake Nyassa another lake of 
still nobler proportions takes up the thread of com- 
munication. Lake Tanganyika is 450 miles in length. 
Between the lakes stands a lofty plateau, cool, healthy, 
accessible, and without any physical barrier to in- 
terrupt the explorer's march. By this route the Vic- 
toria Nyanza and the Albert Nyanza may be ap- 
proached with less fatigue, less risk, and not less speed, 
than by the overland trail from Zanzibar. At one 
point also, along this line, one is within a short 
march of that other great route which must ever be 
regarded as the trunk-line of the African continent. 
The watershed of the Congo lies on this Nyassa- 
Tanganyika plateau. This is the stupendous natural 
highway on which so much of the future of East 
Central Africa must yet depend. 

Ten days' languid steaming from Zanzibar brings 
the traveller to the Zambesi mouth. The bar here 
has an evil reputation, and the port is fixed on a little 
river which flows into the Indian Ocean slightly to 
the north, but the upper reaches of which almost join 
the Zambesi at some distance inland. This port is 
the Portuguese settlement of Quilimane, and here I 
said good-bye to the steamer and to civilization. 
Some distance in the interior stands a solitary pioneer 
Mission station of the Established Church of Scot- 
land, and still farther in, on Lake Nyassa, another 
outpost of a sister church. My route led past both 
these stations, and I had the good fortune to pick 
up on the way two or three young fellow-country- 
men who were going up to relieve the mission staff. 
For the latter part of my journey I was quite alone. 
All African work, as a rule, is done single-handed. 
It is not always easy to find a companion for such a 
project, and the climate is so pestilential that when 



12 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

two go, you and your friend are simply nursing each 
other time about, and the expedition never gets on. 
On the whole, however, the solitary course is not to 
be commended. An unutterable loneliness comes 
over one at times in the great still forests, and there 
is a stage in African fever— rand every one musth&ve 
fever — when the watchful hand of a friend may make 
the difference between life and death. 

After leaving Quilimane, the first week of our 
journey up the Qua-qua was one long picnic. We 
had two small row-boats, the sterns covered with a 
sun-proof awning, and under these we basked, and 
talked, and read and prospected, from dawn to sun- 
set. Each boat was paddled by seven or eight 
natives — muscular heathens, whose sole dress was 
a pocket-handkerchief, a little palm oil, and a few 
mosquitoes. Except at first the river was only a 
few yards broad, and changed in character and 
novelty every hour. Now it ran through a grove 
of cocoa-nut palms — the most wonderful and beau- 
tiful tree of the tropics. Now its sullen current 
oozed through a foetid swamp of mangroves — the 
home of the crocodile and the hippopotamus, whose 
slimy bodies wallowed into the pools with a splash 
as our boats sped past. Again the banks became 
green and graceful, the long plumed grasses bending 
to the stream, and the whole a living aviary of birds 
— the white ibis and the gaunt fish eagle, and the 
exquisite blue and scarlet kingfisher watching its 
prey from the overhanging boughs. The business- 
like air of this last bird is almost comical, and some- 
how sits ill on a creature of such gorgeous beautjr. 
One expects him to flutter away before the approach 
of so material a thing as a boat, display his fairy 
plumage in a few airy movements, and melt away in 
the sunshine. But there he sits, stolid and impas- 
sive, and though the spray of the paddles almost dashes 
in his face, the intent eyes never move, and he refuses 
to acknowledge the intruder by so much as a glance. 



THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA. 13 

His larger ally, the black and white spotted king- 
fisher, if less beautiful, is much more energetic, and 
darts about the bank incessantly, coquetting with the 
boat from reach to reach, and seldom allowing an 
inspection close enough to take in the details of his 
piebald coat. 

One interests oneself in these things more par- 
ticularly because there is nothing at first especially 
striking about the river scenery itself. Ten or 
twenty feet of bank cuts off the view on either side, 
and large and varied features are wanting. The 
banks are lined with the densest jungle of mangroves 
and aquatic grasses, while creepers of a hundred 
kinds struggle for life among the interlacing stems. 
We saw crocodiles here in such numbers that count 
was very soon lost. They were of all sizes, from 
the baby specimen which one might take home in a 
bottle to the enormous bullet-proof brute the size of 
an 81-ton gun. These revolting animals take their 
siesta in the heat of the day, lying prone upon the 
bank, with their wedge-shaped heads directed^ to- 
wards the water. When disturbed they scuttle into 
the river with a wriggling movement, the precipitancy 
of which defies the power of sight. The adjustment 
of the adult crocodile to its environment in the matter 
of color is quite remarkable. The younger forms 
are lighter yellow, and more easily discoverable, but 
it takes the careful use of a good pair of eyes to dis- 
tinguish in the gnarled slime-covered log lying among 
the rotting stumps the living form of the mature 
specimen. Between the African crocodiles and the 
alligators there is the slightest possible external dif- 
ference ; although the longer head, the arrangement 
of scales, the fringed feet with their webbed toes, 
the uniform teeth, and the protrusion of the large 
canine, distinguish them from their American allies. 
Many of the ibises I shot as we moved along, for 
food for the men, who, like all Africans, will do any- 
thing for flesh in whatever form. For ourselves, we 



14 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

lived upon emaciated fowls and tinned meats cook- 
ing them at a fire on the bank when the boat stopped. 
Eggs are never eaten by the natives, but always set.; 
although, if you offer to buy them, the natives will 
bring you a dozen from a sitting hen, which they 
assure you were laid that very morning. In the in- 
terior, on many occasions afterwards, these protesta- 
tions were tested, and always proved false. One time, 
when nearly famished and far from camp, I was 
brought a few eggs which a chief himself guaranteed 
had that very hour been laid. With sincere hope 
that he might be right, but with much misgiving, I 
ordered the two freshest looking to be boiled. With 
the despair of a starving man I opened them. They 
were cock and hen. 

Breakfast and luncheon and dinner are all the 
same in Africa. There is no beef, nor mutton, nor 
bread, nor flour, nor sugar, nor salt, nor anything 
whatever, except an occasional fowl, which an English- 
man can eat. Hence the enormous outfit which he 
must carry with him. No one has any idea of what 
can be had in tins till he camps out abroad. Every 
conceivable digestible and indigestible is to be had 
tinned, every form of fish, flesh, fowl, and game, 
every species of vegetable, and fruit, every soup, sweet, 
and entree ; but after two or three months of this 
sort of thing you learn that this tempting semblance 
of variety is a gigantic imposition. The sole differ- 
ence between these various articles lies, like the Rhine 
wines, in the label. Plum pudding or kippered her- 
ring taste just the same. Whether you begin dinner 
with tinned calves-foot jelly or end with tinned salmon 
makes no difference ; and after six months it is only 
by a slight feeling of hardness that you do not 
swallow the tins themselves. 

At the end of a too short week we left our boats 
behind. Engaging an army of shy natives at a few 
huts near the bank, we struck across a low neck of 
land, and after an hour's walk found ourselves sud- 



THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA. 15 

denly on the banks of the Zambesi. A solitary bun- 
galow was in sight, and opposite it the little steamer 
of the African Lakes Company, which was to take us 
up the Shire. There is more in the association, 
perhaps, than in the landscape, to strike one as he 
first furrows the waters of this virgin river. We are 
fifty miles from its mouth, the mile-wide water 
shallow and brown, the low sandy banks fringed with 
alligators and wild birds. The great deltoid plain, 
yellow with sun-tanned reeds and sparsely covered 
with trees, stretches on every side; the sun is blister- 
ing hot ; the sky, as it will be for months, a monot- 
onous dome of blue — not a frank bright blue like 
the Canadian sky, but a veiled blue, a suspicious and 
malarious blue, partly due to the perpetual heat haze 
and partly to the imagination, for the Zambesi is no 
friend to the European, and this whole region is 
heavy with depressing memories. 

This impression, perhaps, was heightened by the 
fact that we were to spend that night within a few 
yards of the place where Mrs. Livingstone died. 
Late in the afternoon we reached the spot — a low 
ruined hut a hundred yards from the river's bank, 
with a broad verandah shading its crumbling walls. 
A grass-grown path straggled to the doorway, and the 
fresh print of a hippopotamus told how neglected the 
spot is now. Pushing the door open, we found our- 
selves in a long dark room, its mud floor broken into 
fragments, and remains of native fires betraying its 
latest occupants. Turning to the right, we entered 
a smaller chamber, the walls bare and stained, with 
two glassless windows facing the river. The evening 
sun setting over the far-off Morurnballa mountains, 
filled the room with its soft glow, and took our 
thoughts back to that Sunday evening ^twenty years 
ago, when in this same bedroom, at this same hour, 
Livingstone knelt over his dying wife, and wit- 
nessed the great sunset of his life, 

Under a huge baobab tree — a miracle of vegetable 



16 TROPTCAL AFRICA. 

vitality and luxuriance — stands Mrs. Livingstone's 
grave. The picture in Livingstone's book represents 
the place as well kept and surrounded with neatly- 
planted trees. But now it is an utter wilderness, 
matted with jungle grass and trodden by the beasts of 
the forest; and as I looked at the forsaken mound and 
contrasted it with her husband's tomb in Westminster 
Abbey, I thought perhaps the woman's love which 
brought her to a spot like this might be not less 
worthy of immortality. 

The Zambesi is the great river of Eastern Africa, 
and, after the Congo, the Nile, and the Niger, the 
most important on the continent. Rising in the far 
interior among the marshes of Lake Dilolo, and, 
gathering volume from the streams which flow from 
the high lands connecting the north of Lake Nyassa 
with Inner Angola, it curves across the country for 
over a thousand miles like an attenuated letter S, and 
before its four great mouths empty the far-travelled 
waters into the Indian Ocean, drains an area of 
more than half a million square miles. As it cuts its 
way down* the successive steps of the central plateaux 
its usually placid current is interrupted by rapids, 
narrows, cascades, and cataracts, corresponding to the 
plateau edges, so that like all the rivers of Africa it is 
only navigable in stretches of one or two hundred 
miles at a time. From the coast the Zambesi might 
be stemmed by steam-power to the rapids of Kebra- 
basa ; and from above that point intermittently, as far 
as the impassable barrier of the Victoria Falls. Above 
this, for some distance, again follow rapids and water- 
falls, but these are at lengthsucceeded by an unbroken 
chain of tributaries which together form an inland 
waterway of a thousand miles in length. The broad 
lands along the banks of this noble river are subject 
to annual inundations like the region of the Nile, and 
hence their agricultural possibilities are unlimited. 
On the lower Zambesi, indigo, the orchila weed, and 
caluraba-root abound, and oil-seeds and sugar-cane 



THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA. 17 

could be produced in quantity to supply the whole 
of Europe. At present, owing to apathy and in- 
different government, these magnificent resources are 
almost wholly undeveloped. 

Next afternoon our little vessel left the Zambesi 
in its wake and struck up a fine lake-like expansion 
to the north, which represents the mouth of the Shire. 
Narrower and deeper, the tributary is a better stream 
for navigation than the Zambesi. The scenery also 
is really fine, especially as one nears the mountains 
of the plateau, and the strange peoples and animals 
along the banks occupy the mind with perpetual 
interests. The hippopotami, prowling round the boat 
and tromboning at us within pistol-shot, kept us 
awake at night ; and during the day we could see 
elephants, buffaloes, deer, and other large game 
wandering about the banks. To see the elephant at 
home is a sight to remember. The stupendous 
awkwardness of the menagerie animal, as if so large 
a creature were quite a mistake, vanishes completely 
when you watch him in his native haunts. Here he 
is as nimble as a kitten, and you see how^ perfectly 
this moving mountain is adapted to its habitat— how 
such a ponderous monster, indeed, is as natural to 
these colossal grasses as a rabbit to an English park. 
We were extremely fortunate in seeing elephants at 
all at this stage, and I question whether there is any 
other part of Africa where these animals may be 
observed leisurely and in safety within six weeks of 
London. Mr. Stanley in his Livingstone expedition 
was ten months in the country before he saw any ; 
and Mr. Joseph Thomson, during his long journey to 
Tanganyika and back, never came across a single 
elephant. It is said that the whale which all trav- 
ellers see in crossing the Atlantic is kept up by the 
steamboat companies, but I vouch that these bnirS 
valley elephants are independent of subsidy. 

The question of the disappearance of the elephant 
here and throughout Africa is, as every one knows, 



18 TU0P1CAL AFMCA. 

only one of a few years. It is hard to think why 
this kindly and sagacious creature should have to be 
exterminated; why this vast store of animal energy, 
which might be turned into so much useful work, 
should be lost to civilization. But the causes are 
not difficult to understand. The African elephant 
lias never been successfully tamed, and is therefore 
a failure as a source of energy. As a source of ivory, 
on the other hand, he has been but too great a success. 
The cost of ivory at present is about half-a-sovereign 
per pound. An average tusk weighs from twenty 
to thirty pounds. Each animal has two, and in Africa 
both male and female carry tusks. The average 
elephant is therefore worth in pounds sterling the 
weight in pounds avoirdupois of one of his tusks. I 
have frequently seen single tusks turning the scale 
upon ninety pounds, the pair in this case being worth 
nearly <£100 sterling, — so that a herd of elephants is 
about as valuable as a gold mine. The temptation to 
sacrifice the animal for his tusks is therefore great ; 
and as he becomes scarcer he will be pursued by the 
hunter with ever-increasing eagerness. But the truth 
is, sad though the confession be, the sooner the last 
elephant falls before the hunters bullet the better for 
Africa. Ivory introduces into the country at present 
an abnormal state of things. Upon this one article 
is set so enormous a premium that none other among 
African products secures the slightest general atten- 
tion ; nor will almost anyone in the interior con- 
descend to touch the normal wealth, or develop the 
legitimate industries of the country, so long as a tusk 
remains. In addition to this, of half the real woes 
which now exist in Africa ivory is at the bottom. 
It is not only that wherever there is an article to 
which a fictitious value is attached the effect upon 
the producer is apt to be injurious ; nor that wherever 
there is money there is temptation, covetousness,and 
war ; but that unprincipled men, and especially Arabs, 
are brought into contact with the natives in the worst 



THE WATER-T10XTTE TO THE HEART OE AFRICA. 19 

relation, influence them only in one, and that the 
lowest, direction, and leave them always worse than 
they find them — worse in greed, in knavery, in their 
belief in mankind, and in their suspicion of civil- 
ization. Further, for every tusk an Arab trader 
purchases he must buy, borrow, or steal a slave 
to carry it to the coast. Domestic slavery is bad 
enough, but now begins the long slave-march with 
its untold horrors — horrors instigated and perpetuated 
almost solely by the traffic in ivory. The exter- 
mination of the elephant, therefore, will mark one 
stage at least in the closing up of the slave-trade. 
The elephant has done much for Africa. The best he 
can do now for his country is to disappear forever. 
In books of travel great chiefs are usually called 
kings, their wives queens, while their mud-huts are 
always palaces. But after seeing my first African chief 
at home, I found I must either change my views of 
kings or of authors. The regal splendor of Chip- 
itula's court — and Chipitula was a very great chief 
indeed, and owned all the Shire district — may be 
judged of by the fact that when I paid my respects 
to his highness his court-dress consisted almost 
exclusively of a pair of suspenders. I made this king 
happy for life by the gift of a scarlet tennis-cap and 
a few buttons. But poor Chipitula had not long to 
enjoy his treasures, — and I mention the incident to 
show what is going on every day in Africa. When 
I came back that way, on my return journey, I called 
again to receive a leopard skin which this chief had 
promised to trap for me, and for which lie was to get 
in exchange certain dilapidated remnants of my ward- 
robe. He gave me the skin ; I duly covered his, and 
we parted. A few days after, another white man 
came that way; he was a trader — the only one who 
has yet plied this hazardous calling in East Central 
Africa. He quarrelled with Chipitula over some 
bargain, and in a moment of passion drew his revolv- 
er and shot the chief dead on the spot. Of course 



20 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

he himself was instantly speared by Chipitula's men ; 
and all his black porters, according to native etiquette, 
were butchered with their master. There is ab- 
solutely no law in Africa, and you can kill anybody 
and anybody can kill you, and no one will ask any 
questions. 

Our next stoppage was to pay another homage — 
truly this is a tragic region — at another white man's 
grave. A few years ago Bishop Mackenzie and 
some other missionaries were sent to Africa by the 
English Universities, with instructions to try to 
establish a Mission in the footsteps of Livingstone. 
They came here ; the climate overpowered them ; one 
by one they sickened and died. With the death of 
the Bishop himself the site was abandoned, and the 
few survivors returned home. Among the hippo- 
potamus-trampled reeds on the banks of the Shire 
under a rough iron cross, lies the first of three brave 
bishops who have already made their graves in 
Equatorial Africa. 

I have spoken of the Shire as the great waterway 
into the interior of Eastern Africa. It has one defect. 
After sailing for five or six days we came to rapids 
which no boat can pass. These rapids were named 
by Livingstone the Murchison Cataracts, and they 
extend for seventy miles. This distance, accordingly, 
must be traversed overland. Half-way up this sev- 
enty miles, and a considerable distance inland from 
the river, stands the first white settlement in East 
Central Africa — the Blantyre Mission. Bribing about 
a hundred natives with a promise of a fathom of calico 
each, to carry our luggage, we set off on foot for 
Blantyre. The traditional characteristics of African 
caravan ing were displayed in full perfection during 
this first experience, and darkness fell when we were 
but half-way to our destination. It was our first night 
in the bush, and a somewhat unusual introduction to 
African travelling marked it. At midnight we were 
roused by startling cries from our men, who lay sleep- 



THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA. 21 

ing on the ground around us. The watch-fires must 
have burned down, for a lion had suddenly sprung 
into the camp. Seizing the man who lay nearest the 
forest, the animal buried its claws in his breast, and 
was making off into the darkness, when the shouting 
frightened it and made it drop its prey. Twice dur- 
ing the night the lion came back, and we whites had 
to keep watch by turns till morning with loaded rifles. 
This is altogether an exceptional case, for with a 
good fire one can generally spread his mat anywhere 
in the tropics without fear of midnight attack. This 
is a famous place, however, for lions, and one can as 
certainly depend on their gruesome concert in the 
early morning as on the sparrows' chirp in England. 
Towards sunset the following evening our caravan 
filed into Blantyre. On the beauty and interest of 
this ideal mission I shall not dwell. But if anyone 
wishes to find out what can be done with the virgin 
African, what can be done by broad and practical 
missionary methods, let him visit the Rev. D. Cle- 
ment Scott and his friends at Blantyre. And if he 
wishes to observe the possibilities of civilization and 
colonization among an average African tribe living on 
an average African soil, let him examine the mission 
plantations, and those of Mr. John and Mr. Frederick 
Moir at Mandala, and of the Brothers Buchanan at 
Zomba. And, further, if he desires to know what 
the milk of human kindness is, let him time his attack 
of fever so that haply it may coincide with his visit 
to either of these centres of self-denying goodness and 
hospitality. 



2'2 TROPICAL AFRICA. 



II. 

THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY. 

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA. 

Somewhere in the Shire Highlands, in 1859, Liv* 
ingstone saw a large lake — Lake Shirwa — which is still 
almost unknown. It lies away to the East, and is 
bounded by a range of mountains whose lofty summits 
are visible from the hills round Blantyre. Thinking 
it might be a useful initiation to African travel if I 
devoted a short time to its exploration, I set off" one 
morning accompanied by two members of the Blan- 
tyre staff and a small retinue of natives. Steering 
across country in the direction in which it lay, we 
found, two days before seeing the actual water, that 
we were already on the ancient bed of the lake. 
Though now clothed with forest, the whole district 
has obviously been under water at a comparatively 
recent period, and the shores of Lake Shirwa probably 
reached atone time to within a few miles of Blantyre 
itself. On reaching the lake a very aged female chief 
came to see us, and told us how, long, long ago, a 
white man came to her village and gave her a present 
of cloth. Of the white man, who must have been 
Livingstone, she spoke very kindly; and, indeed, 
wherever David Livingstone's footsteps are crossed 
in Africa the fragrance of his memory seems to re- 
main. 

The waters of Shirwa are brackish to the taste, 
and undrinkable ; but the saltness must have a pe- 
culiar charm for game, for nowhere else in Africa 
did I see such splendid herds of the larger animals 
as here. The zebra was especially abundant ; and 
so unaccustomed to be disturbed are these creatures, 



THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTU V. 23 

that with a little care one could watch their move- 
ments safely within a very few yards. It may see in 
unorthodox to say so, but I do not know if among 
the larger animals there is anything handsomer in 
creation than the zebra. At close quarters his striped 
coat is all but as fine as the tiger's, while the form 
and movement of his body are in every way nobler. 
The gait certainly, is not to be compared for grace- 
fulness with that of the many species of antelope and 
deer who nibble the grass beside him, and one can 
never quite forget that scientifically he is an ass ; 
but taking him all in all, this fleet and beautiful 
animal ought to have a higher place in the regard of 
man than he has yet received. 

We were much surprised, considering that this 
region is almost uninhabited, to discover near the 
lake shore a native path so beaten, and so recently 
beaten by multitudes of human feet, that it could 
only represent some trunk route through the conti- 
nent. Following it for a few miles, we soon discovered 
its function. It was one of the great slave routes 
through Africa. Signs of the horrid traffic soon 
became visible on every side ; and from symmetrical 
arrangements of small piles of stones and freshly-cut 
twigs, planted semaphore-wise upon the path, our 
native guides made out that a slave-caravan was 
actually passing at the time. We were, in fact, 
between two portions of it, the stones and twigs 
being telegraphic signals between front and rear. 
Our natives seemed much alarmed at this discoveiy, 
and refused to proceed unless we promised not to 
interfere — a proceeding which, had we attempted it, 
would simply have meant murder for ourselves and 
slavery for them. Next day, from a -hill-top, we saw 
the slave encampment far below, and the ghastly 
procession marshalling for its march to the distant 
coast, which many of the hundreds who composed it 
would never reach alive. 

Talking of native footpaths leads me to turn aside 



24 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

for a moment to explain to the uninitiated the true 
mode of African travel. In spite of all the books 
that have been lavished upon us by our great ex- 
plorers, few people seem to have any accurate under- 
standing of this most simple process. Some have 
the impression that everything is done in bullock- 
wagons — an idea borrowed from the Cape, but hope- 
lessly inapplicable to Central Africa, where a wheel 
at present would be as great a novelty as a polar bear. 
Others at the opposite extreme suppose that the ex- 
plorer works along solely by compass, making a bee- 
line for his destination, and steering his caravan 
through the trackless wilderness like a ship at sea. 
Now it may be a surprise to the unenlightened to 
learn that probably no explorer in forcing his passage 
through Africa has ever, for more than a few days 
at a time, been off some beaten track. Probably 
no country in the world, civilized or uncivilized, is 
better supplied with paths than this unmapped conti- 
nent. Every village is connected with some other 
village, every tribe with the next tribe, every state 
with its neighbor, and therefore with all the rest. 
The explorer's business is simply to select from this 
network of tracks, keep a general direction, and hold 
on his way. Let him begin at Zanzibar, plant his 
foot on a native footpath, and set his face towards 
Tanganyika. In eight months he will be there. He 
lias simply to persevere. From village to village he 
will be handed on, zigzagging it may be sometimes 
to avoid the impassable barriers of nature or the rarer 
perils of hostile tribes, but never taking to the woods, 
never guided solely by the stars, never in fact leav- 
ing a beaten track, till hundreds and hundreds of 
miles are between him and the sea, and his intermin- 
able footpath ends with a canoe, on the shores of 
Tanganyika. Crossing the lake, landing near some 
native village, he picks up the thread once more. 
Again he plods on and on, now on foot, now by canoe, 
but always keeping his line of villages, until one day 



THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY 25 

suddenly he sniffs the sea-breeze again, and his faith- 
ful foot- wide guide lands him on the Atlantic sea- 
board. 

Nor is there any art in rinding out these successive 
villages with their intercommunicating links. He 
must find them out. A whole army of guides, serv- 
ants, carriers, soldiers and camp-followers accompany 
him in his inarch, and this nondescript regiment must 
be fed. Indian corn, cassava, mawere, beans, and ban- 
anus — these do not grow wild even in Africa. Every 
meal has to be bought and paid for in cloth and beads ; 
and scarcely three days can pass without a call having 
to be made at some village where the necessary sup- 
plies can be obtained. A caravan, as a rule, must live 
from hand to mouth, and its march becomes simply a 
regulated procession through a chain of markets. 
Not, however, that there are any real markets — there 
are neither bazaars nor stores in native Africa. Thou- 
sands of the villages through which the traveller eats 
his way may never have victualled a caravan before. 
But, with the chief's consent, which is usually easily 
purchased for a showy present, the villages unlock 
their larders, the women Hock to the grinding stones, 
and basketfuls of food are swiftly exchanged for un- 
known equivalents in beads and calico. 

The native tracks which I have just described are 
the same in character all over Africa. They are 
veritable footpaths, never over a foot in breadth, 
beaten as hard as adamant, and rutted beneath the 
level of the forest bed by centuries of native traffic. 
As a rule these footpaths, are marvellously direct. 
Like the roads of the old Romans, they run straight 
on through everything, ridge and mountain and valley, 
never shying at obstacles, nor anywhere turning aside 
to breathe. Yet within this general straightforward- 
ness there is a singular eccentricity and indirectness in 
detail. Although the African footpath is on the 
whole a bee-line, no fifty yards of it are ever straight. 
And the reason is not far to seek. If a stone is 



26 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

encountered no native will ever think of removing it. 
Why should he ? It is easier to walk round it. The 
next man who comes that way will do the same. He 
knows that a hundred men are following him; he 
looks at the stone ; a moment, and it might be un- 
earthed and tossed aside, but no; he also holds on his 
way. It is not that he resents the trouble, it is the 
idea that is wanting. It would no more occur to him 
that that stone was a displaceable object, and that for 
the general weal he might displace it, than that its 
feldspar was of the orthoclase variety. Generations 
and generations of men have passed that stone, and 
it still waits for a man with an altruistic idea. But 
it would be a very stony country indeed — and Africa 
is far from stony — that would wholly account for the 
aggravating obliqueness and indecision of the African 
footpath. Probably each four miles, on an average 
path, is spun out by an infinite series of minor 
sinuosities, to five or six. Now these deflections are 
not meaningless. Each has some history — a history 
dating back, perhaps, a thousand years, but to which 
all clue has centuries ago been lost. The leading 
cause, probably, is fallen trees. When a tree falls 
across a path no man ever removes it. As in the case of 
the stone, the native goes round it. It is too green to 
burn in his hut ; before it is dry, and the white ants 
have eaten it, the new detour has become part and 
parcel of the path. The smaller irregularities, on the 
other hand, represent the trees and stumps of the 
primeval forest where the track was made at first. 
But whatever the cause, it is certain that for persist- 
ent straightforwardness in the general, and utter 
vacillation and irresolution in the particular, the Afri- 
can roads are unique in engineering. 

Though one of the smaller African lakes, Shirwa 
is probably larger than all the lakes of Great Britain 
put together. With the splendid environment of 
mountains on three of its sides, softened and distanced 
by perpetual summer haze, it* reminds one somewhat 



THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY. 27 

of the Great Salt Lake simmering in a July sun. We 
pitched our tent for a day or two on its western shore 
among a harmless and surprised people who had 
never gazed on the pallid countenances of English- 
men before. Owing to the ravages of the slaver the 
people of Shirwa are few, scattered and poor, and 
live in abiding terror. The densest populalion is to 
be found on the small island, heavily timbered with 
baobabs, which forms a picturesque feature of the 
northern end. These Wa-Nyassa, or people of the 
lake, as they call themselves, have been driven here 
by fear, and they rarely leave their Lake-Dwelling 
unless under cover of night. Even then they are 
liable to capture by any man of a stronger tribe who 
happens to meet them, and numbers who have been 
kidnapped in this way are to be found in the villages 
of neighboring chiefs. This is an amenity of ex- 
istence in Africa that strikes one as very terrible. It 
is impossible for those at home to understand how 
literally savage man is a chattel, and how much Ins 
life is spent in the more safeguarding of his main 
asset, i. e., himself. There are actually districts in 
Africa where three natives cannot be sent a message 
in case two should combine and sell the third before 
they return. 

After some time spent in the Lake Shirwa and 
Shire districts, I set out for the Upper Shire and 
Lake Nyassa. Two short days' walk from the settle- 
ment at Biantyre brings one once more to the banks 
of the Shire. Here I found waiting the famous little 
llala, a tiny steamer, little bigger than a large steam 
launch. It belonged originally to the missionaries on 
Lake Nyassa, and was carried here a few years ago 
from England in seven hundred pieces, and bolted 
together on the river bank. No chapter in romance 
is more interesting than the story of the pioneer 
voyage of the llala, as it sailed away for the first 
time towards the unknown waters of Nyassa. No 
keel had ever broken the surface of this mighty lake 



28 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

before, and the wonderment of the natives as the 

Big Canoe hissed past their villages is described by 

those who witnessed it as a spectacle of indescribable 

interest. The llala is named, of course, after the 

village where David Livingstone breathed his last. 

It indicates the heroic mission of the little ship — to 

take up the work of Civilization and Christianity 

where the great explorer left it. The llala now plies 

at intervals between the Upper Shire — above the 

cataracts — and the shores of Lake Nyassa, carrying 

supplies to the handful of missionaries settled on the 

western shore. Though commanded by a white man, 

the work on board is entirely done by natives from 

the locality. The confidence of the black people 

once gained, no great difficulty seems to have been 

found in getting volunteers enough for this novel 

employment. Singularly enough, while deck hands 

are often only enlisted after some persuasion, the 

competition for the office of fireman — a disagreeable 

post at any time, but in the tropical heat the last to 

be coveted — is so keen that any number of natives 

are at all times ready to be frizzled in the stokehole. 

Instead of avoiding heat, the African native every* 

where courts it. His nature expands and revels in 

it ; while a breath of cold on a mountain slope, or a 

sudden shower of rain, transforms him instantly into 

a most woebegone object. 

After leaving Matope, just above the Murchison 
cataracts, the llala steams for a couple of days in the 
river before Lake Nyassa is reached. The valley 
throughout this length is very broad, bounded on 
either side by distant mountains which at an earlier 
period probably formed the shores of a larger Lake 
Nyassa. The fact that Lake Nyassa is silting up at 
its southern end becomes more apparent as one nears 
the lake, for here one finds a considerable expanse 
already cut off from the larger portion, and forming 
a separate sheet of water. The smaller lake is Lake 
Pomalombe, and it is already so shallow that in the 



THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY. 29 

dry season the Bala's screw stirs the gray mud at 
the bottom. The friendship of the few villages along 
the bank is secured by an occasional present ; although 
the relations between some of them and the Big 
Canoe are at times a little strained, and in bad 
humors doubtless they would send it to the bottom 
if they dared. It is to be remembered that this 
whole region is as yet altogether beyond the limits, 
and almost beyond the knowledge of civilization, and 
'few white men have ever been in the country, except 
the few agents connected with the Lakes Company 
and the Missions. Beyond an occasional barter ot 
cloth or beads for firewood and food, the Mala has 
no dealings with the tribes on the Upper Slnre\ and 
at present they are about as much affected by the 
passino- to and fro of the white man's steamer as are 
the inhabitants of Kensington by an occasional wild- 
fowl making for Regent's Park. One is apt to con- 
clude, from the mere presence of such a thing as a 
steamer in Central Africa, that the country through 
which it is passing must be in some sense civilized, 
and the hourly reminders to the contrary which one 
receives on the spot are among the most startling 
experiences of the traveller. It is almost impossible 
for him to believe, as he watches the native life from 
the cabin of the Mala, that these people are altogether 
uncivilized ; just as it is impossible for him to believe 
that that lurch a moment ago was caused by the 
little craft bumping against a submerged hippopot- 
amus. A steel ship, London built, steaming six 
knots ahead ; and grass huts, nude natives, and a 
hippopotamus— the ideas refuse to assort themselves, 
and one lives in a perpetual state of bewilderment 
and interrogation. m . . 

It was a brilliant summer morning when the Mala 
steamed into Lake Nyassa, and in a few hours we 
were at anchor in the little bay at Livingstonia, 
My first impression of this famous mission-station 
certainly will never be forgotten. Magnificent 



SO TROPICAL AFRICA. 

mountains of granite, green to the summit with 
forest, encircled it, and on the silver sand of a still 
smaller bay stood the small row of trim white cottages. 
A neat path through a small garden led up to the 
settlement, and I approached the largest house and 
entered. It was the Livingstonia manse— the head 
missionary's house. It was spotlessly clean ; English 
furniture was in the room, a medicine chest, familiar- 
looking dishes were in the cupboards, books lying 
about, but there was no missionary in it. I went to 
the next house— it was the school, the benches were 
there and the blackboard, but there were no scholars 
and no teacher. I passed to the next, it was the 
blacksmith shop ; there were the tools and the 
anvil, but there was no blacksmith. And so on to 
the next, and the next, all in perfect order, and all 
empty.^ Then a native approached and led me a few 
yards into the forest. And there among the mimosa 
trees, under a huge granite mountain, were four or 
five graves. These were the missionaries. 

I spent a day or two in the solemn shadow of 
that deserted manse. It is one of the loveliest spots 
in the world; and it was hard to believe, sitting 
under the tamarind trees by the quiet lake shore 5 , 
that the pestilence which wasteth at midnight had 
made this beautiful spot its home. A hundred and 
fifty miles north, on the same lake-coast, the remnant 
of the missionaries have begun their task again, and 
there, slowly, against fearful odds, they are carrying 
on their work. Travellers have been pleased to say 
unkind things of missionaries. That they are some- 
times right, I will not question. But I will say of 
the Livingstonia missionaries, and of the Blantyre 
missionaries, and count it an honor to say it, that 
they are brave, efficient, single-hearted men, who 
need our sympathy more than we know, and are 
equally above our criticism and our praise. 

Malarial fever is the one sad certainty which every 
African traveller must face. For months he may 



THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY. 31 

escape, but its finger is upon him and well for him 
if he has a friend near when it finally overtakes him. 
It is preceded for weeks, or even for a month or two, 
by unaccountable irritability, depression and weari- 
ness On the march with his men he has scarcely 
started when he sighs for the noon-day rest. I uttmg 
it down to mere laziness, he goads himselt on by 
draughts from the water-bottle, and totters forward a 
mile or two more. Next he finds himself skulking 
into the forest on the pretext of looking at a speci- 
men, and, when his porters are out of sight, throws 
himself under a tree in utter limpness and despair. 
Roused by mere shame, lies taggers along the trail, 
and as he nears the mid-day camp puts on a spurt 
to conceal his defeat, which finishes him for the rest 
of the day. This is a good place for specimens he 
tells the men— the tent may be pitched for the night. 
This goes on day after day till the crash comes— 
first cold and pain, then heat and pain, then every 
kind of pain, and every degree of heat then delirium, 
then the life-and-death struggle. He rises, if he 
does rise, a shadow ; and slowly accumulates strength 
for the next attack, which he knows too well will 
not disappoint him. No one has ever yet got to 
the bottom of African fever. Its geographical dis- 
tribution is still unmapped, but generally it prevails 
over the whole east and west coasts within the 
tropical limit, along all the river-courses, on the 
shores of the inland lakes, and in all low-lying and 
marshy districts. The higher plateaux, presumably, 
are comparatively free from it, but in order to reach 
these, malarious districts of greater or smaller area 
have to be traversed. There the system becomes 
saturated with fever, which often develops long alter 
the infected region is left behind. The known facts 
with regard to African fever are these : First, it is 
connected in some way with drying-up water and 
decaying vegetation, though how the germs develop, 
or what they are, is unknown. Second, natives 



32 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

suffer from fever equally with Europeans, and this 
more particularly in changing from district to district 
and from altitude to altitude. Thus, in marching 
over the Tanganyika plateau, four or five of my 
native carriers were down with fever, although their 
homes were only two or three hundred miles off, 
before I had even a touch of it. Third, quinine is 
the great and almost the sole remedy ; and, fourth, 
no European ever escapes it. 

The really appalling mortality of Europeans is a 
fact with which all who have any idea of casting in 
their lot with Africa should seriously reckon. None 
but those who have been on the spot, or have fol- 
lowed closely the inner history of African exploration 
and missionary work can appreciate the gravity of 
the situation. The malaria spares no man ; the 
strong fall as the weak ; no number of precautions 
can provide against it ; no kind of care can do more 
than make the attacks less frequent ; no prediction 
can be made beforehand as to which regions are 
haunted by it and which are safe. It is not the 
least ghastly feature of this invisible plague that the 
only known scientific test for it at present is a 
human life. That test has been applied in the 
Congo region already with a recklessness which the 
sober judgment can only characterize as criminal. 
It is a small matter that men should throw away 
their lives, in hundreds, if need be, for a holy cause ; 
but it is not a small matter that man after man, in 
long and in fatal succession, should seek to overleap 
what is plainly a barrier of Nature. And science has 
a duty in pointing out that no devotion or enthusiasm 
can give any man a charmed life, and that those who 
work for the highest ends will best attain them in 
humble obedience to the common laws. Transcend- 
entally, this may be denied ; the warning finger may 
be despised as the hand of the coward and the pro- 
fane. But the fact remains — the fact of an awful 
chain of English graves stretching across Africa. 



THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY. 33 

This is not spoken, nevertheless, to discourage mis- 
sionary enterprise. It is only said to regulate it. 

To the head of Lake Nyassa in a little steam yacht 
is quite a sea-voyage. What with heavy seas, and 
head-winds, and stopping to wood, and lying-to at 
nights, it takes longer time than going from England 
to America. The lake is begirt with mountains, and 
storms are so incessant and so furious that Liv- 
ingstone actually christened Nyassa the " Lake ot 
Storms." The motion on anchoring at night was 
generally so unpleasant that one preferred then to be 
let on shore. My men— for I had already begun to 
pick up my caravan whenever I could find a native 
willing to go— would kindle fires all round to keep 
off beasts of prey, and we slept in peace upon the 
soft lake sand. 

Instead of being one hundred and fifty miles long, 
as first supposed, Lake Nyassa is now known to have 
a length of three hundred and fifty miles, and a 
breadth varying from sixteen to sixty miles. It oc- 
cupies a gigantic trough of granite and gneiss, the 
profoundly deep water standing at a level of sixteen 
hundred feet above the sea, with the mountains rising 
all around it, and sometimes sheer above it, to a 
height of one, two, three, and four thousand leet. 
The mountains along the west coast form an almost 
unbroken chain, while the north-east and north are 
enclosed by the vast range of the Livingstone Mount- 
ains. The anchorages on the lake are neither so 
numerous nor so sheltered as might be wished, but 
the llala has picked out some fair harbors on the 
west coast, and about half as many are already known 

on the east. , 

I only visited one native village on the lake, ana 
I should hope there are none others like it— indeed 
it was quite exceptional for Africa. I tumbled into 
it early one morning, out of the llala s dingy, and 
lost myself at once in an endless labyrinth of reek- 
ing huts. Its filth was indescribable, and 1 met 



U TROPICAL AFRICA. 

stricken men, at the acute stage of smallpox, wander- 
ing about the place at every turn, as if infection were 
a thing unknown. The chief is the greatest slaver 
and the worst villain on the lake, and impaled upon 
poles all round his lodge, their ghastly faces shrivel- 
ling in the sun, I counted forty human heads. 

This village was not African, however. It was 
Arab. The native villages on Nyassa are rarely so 
large, seldom so compact, and never so dirt} r . Every- 
where they straggle along the shore and through the 
forest, and altogether there must be many hundreds 
of them scattered about the lake. On the western 
shore alone there are at least fifteen different tribes, 
speaking as many different languages, and each of 
them with dialects innumerable. 

The bright spot on Lake Nyassa is Ban da we*, the 
present headquarters of the Scotch Livingstonia Mis- 
sion. The phrase " headquarters of a mission " sug- 
gests to the home Christian a street and a square, 
with its overshadowing church ; a decent graveyard ; 
and a reverent community in its Sunday clothes. 
But Bandawe is only a lodge or two in a vast wilder- 
ness, and the swarthy worshippers flock to the seat- 
less chapel on M'lunga's day dressed mostly in bows 
and arrows. The said chapel, nevertheless, is as great 
an achievement in its way as Cologne Cathedral, and 
its worshippers are quite as much interested, and 
some of them at least to quite as much purpose. In 
reality no words can be a fit witness here to the im- 
pression made by Dr. Laws, Mrs. Laws, and their few 
helpers, upon this singular and apparently intractable 
material. A visit to Bandawe is a great moral lesson. 
And I cherish no more sacred memory of my life 
than that of a communion service in the little Ban- 
dawe chapel, when the sacramental cup was handed 
to me by the bare black arm of a native communicant 
— a communicant whose life, tested afterwards in 
many an hour of trial with me on the Tanganyika 
plateau, gave him perhaps a better right to be there 
than any of us. 



THE IIEABT OF AFRICA. 35 



ITT. 
THE HEART OF AFRICA. 

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE. 

We are now far enough into the interior to form 
some general idea of the aspect of the heart of Africa. 
I shall not attempt to picture any particular spot. 
The description about to be given applies generally 
to Shirwa^the Shire* Highlands, Nyassa, and the 
Nyassa-Tanganyika plateau— regions which together 
make up one of the great lobes of the heart of Africa. 

Nothing could more wildly misrepresent the reality 
than the idea of one's school days that the heart of 
Africa is a desert. Africa rises from its three envi- 
roning oceans in three great tiers, and the general 
physical geography of these has been already sketched 
— first, a coast-line, low and deadly; farther in, a pla- 
teau the height of the Scottish Grampians; farther in 
still, a higher plateau, covering the country for thou- 
sands of miles with mountain and valley. Now fill 
in this sketch, and you have Africa before you. 
Cover the coast belt with rank yellow grass, dot here 
and there a palm ; scatter through it a few demoral- 
ized villages ; and stock it with the leopard, the 
hyena, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus. Clothe 
the mountainous plateaux next— both of them— with 
endless forest, — not grand umbrageous forest like 
the forests of South America, nor matted jungle like 
the forests of India, but with thin, rather weak 
forest,— with forest of low trees, whose half-grown 
trunks and scanty leaves offer no shade from the 
tropical sun. Nor is there anything in these^ trees 
to the casual eye to remind you that you are in the 
tropics. Here and there one comes upon a borassus 



36 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

or fan-palm, a candelabra-like euphorbia, a mimosa 
aflame with color, or a sepulchral baobab. A close 
inspection also will discover curious creepers and 
climbers ; and among the branches strange orchids 
hide their eccentric flowers. But the outward type 
of tree is the same as we have at home — trees re- 
sembling the ash, the beech, and the elm, only 
seldom so large, except by the streams, and never so 
beautiful. 1 Day after day you may wander through 
these forests with nothing except the climate to 
remind you where you are. The beasts, to be sure, 
are different, but unless you watch for them you will 
seldom see any ; the birds are different, but you rarely 
hear them ; and as for the rocks, they are our own 
familiar gneisses and granites, with honest basalt- 
dykes boring through them, and leopard-skin lichens 
staining their weathered sides. Thousands and thou- 
sands of miles, then, of vast thin forest, shadeless, 
trackless, voiceless — forest in mountain and forest 
in plain — this is East Central Africa. 

The indiscriminate praise formerly lavished on trop- 
ical vegetation has received many shocks from recent 
travellers. In Kaffirland, South Africa, I have seen 
one or two forests fine enough to justify the en- 
thusiasm of armchair word-painters of the tropics ; 
but so far as the central plateau is concerned, the 
careful judgment of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace re- 
specting the equatorial belt in general — a judgment 
which has at once sobered all modern descriptions of 
tropical lands, and made imaginative people more 
content to stay at home — applies almost to this 
whole area. The fairy labyrinth of ferns and palms, 
the festoons of climbing plants blocking the paths and 
scenting the forests with their resplendent flowers, 
the gorgeous clouds of insects, the gaily-plum aged 

1 The more important of these trees are — Napaca Kirkii, 
Brachystegia longifolia, Vitexumbroxa, Erythrina speciosa, Flcus 
sycamorus, Khaya senegalensls, Nuxia congesta, Parinarium 
mobola, and Enjthrophlocmnguincensis. 



THE HEART OF AFRICA. 37 

birds, the paroquets, the monkey swinging from his 
trapeze in the shaded bowers — these are unknown to 
Africa. Once a week you will see a palm ; once in 
three months the monkey will cross your path ; the 
flowers on the whole are few ; the trees are poor ; 
and, to be honest, though the endless forest-clad 
mountains have a sublimity of their own, and though 
there are tropical bits along sonic of the mountain- 
streams of exquisite beauty, nowhere is there any- 
thing in grace and sweetness and strength to compare 
with a Highland glen. For the most part of the 
year these forests are jaded and sun-stricken, carpeted 
with no moss or alchemylla or scented woodruff, the 
bare trunks frescoed with few lichens, their motion- 
less and unrefreshed leaves drooping sullenly from 
their sapless boughs. Flowers there are, small and 
great, in endless variety ; but there is no display of 
flowers, no gorgeous show of blossom in the mass, as 
Avhen the blazing gorse and heather bloom at home. 
The dazzling glare of the sun in the torrid zone has 
perhaps something to do with this want of color- 
effect in tropical nature ; for there is always about ten 
minutes just after sunset, when the whole tone of 
the landscape changes like magic, and a singular 
beauty steals over the scene. This is the sweetest 
moment of the African day, and night hides only too 
swiftly the homelike softness and repose so strangely 
grateful to the over-stimulated eye. 

Hidden away in these endless forests, like birds' 
nests in a wood, in terror of one another, and of their 
common foe, the slaver, are small native villages ; 
and here in his virgin simplicity dwells the primeval / 
man, without clothes, without civilization, without 
learning, without religion — the genuine child of 
nature, thoughtless, careless, and contented. This 
man is apparently quite happy; he has practically 
no wants. One stick, pointed, makes him a spear; 
two sticks rubbed together make him a lire; fifty 
sticks tied together make him a house. The bark 



38 TliOPICAL AFRICA. 

he peels from them makes his clothes ; the fruits 
which hang on them form his food. It is perfectly 
astonishing 1 when one thinks of it what nature can 
do for the animal-man, to see with what small capital 
after all a human being can get through the world. 
I once saw an African buried. According to the 
custom of his tribe, his entire earthly possessions — 
and he was an average commoner — were buried with 
him. Into the grave, after the body, was lowered 
the dead man's pipe, then a rough knife, then a mud 
bowl, and last his bow and arrows — the bow string 
cut through the middle, a touching symbol that its 
work was done. This was all. Four items, as an 
auctioneer would say, were the whole belongings for 
half a century of this human being. No man knows 
what a man is till he has seen what a man can be 
without, and be withal a man. That is to say, no 
man knows how great man is till he has seen how 
small he has been once. 

The African is often blamed for being lazy, but 
it is a misuse of words. He does not need to work ; 
with so bountiful a nature round him it would be 
gratuitous to work. And his indolence, therefore, as 
it is called, is just as much a part of himself as his 
flat nose, and as little blameworthy as slowness in 
a tortoise. The fact is, Africa is a nation of the un- 
employed. 

This completeness, however, will be a sad draw- 
back to development. Already it is found difficult 
to create new wants ; and when labor is required, 
and you have already paid your man a yard of calico 
and a string of beads, you have nothing in your 
possession to bribe him to another hand's turn. 
Nothing almost that you have would be the slightest 
use to him. Among the presents which I took for 
chiefs, I was innocent enough to include a watch. 
I might as well have taken a grand piano. For 
months I never looked at my own watch in that x 
land of sunshine. Besides, the mere idea of time has \ 



THE HE A R T OF A FRICA . 30 

scarcely yet penetrated the African mind, and forms 
no element whatever in his calculations. I wanted 
on one occasion to catch the little steamer on the 
Shire, and pleaded this as an excuse to a rather 
powerful chief, whom it would have been dangerous 
to quarrel with, and who would not let me leave his 
village. The man merely stared. The idea of any 
one being in a hurry was not only preposterous but 
inconceivable, and I might as well have urged as 
my reason for wishing away that the angles of a 
triangle are equal to two right angles. 

This difference in ideas is the real obstacle to 
African travelling, and it raises all sorts of problems 
in one's mind as to the nature of ideas themselves. 
I often wished I could get inside an African for an 
afternoon, and just see how he looked at things ; for 
I am sure our worlds are as different as the color of 
our skins. 

Talking of skins, I may observe in passing that 
the highland African is not a negro, nor is his skin 
black. It is a deep full-toned brown, something like 
the color of a good cigar. The whole surface is 
diced with a delicate pattern, which gives it great 
richness and beauty, and I often thought how effect- 
ive a row of books would be bound in native- 
morocco. 

No one knows exactly who these people are. 
They belong, of course, to the great Bantu race ; but 
their origin is obscure, their tribal boundaries are 
unmapped, even their names are unknown, and their 
languages — -for they are many — are unintelligible. 
A fine-looking people, quiet and domestic, their life- 
history from the cradle to the grave is of the utmost 
simplicity. Too ill armed to hunt, they live all but 
exclusively on a vegetable diet. A small part of the 
year they depend, like the monkeys, upon wild fruits 
and herbs ; but the staple food is a small tasteless 
millet-seed which they grow in gardens, crush in a 
mortar, and stir with water into a thick porridge. 



40 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

Twice a day, nearly all the year round, each man 
stuffs himself with this coarse and tasteless dough, 
shoveling it into his mouth in handfuls, and consum- 
ing at a sitting a pile the size of an ant-heap. His 
one occupation is to grow this millet, and his garden- 
ing is a curiosity. Selecting a spot in the forest, he 
climbs a tree, and with a small home-made axe lops 
off the branches one by one. He then wades through 
the litter to the next tree, and hacks it to pieces also, 
leaving the trunk standing erect. Upon all the trees 
within a circle of thirty or forty yards diameter his 
axe works similar havoc, till the ground stands breast- 
high in leaves and branches. Next, the whole is set 
on fire and burned to ashes. Then, when the first 
rains moisten the hard ground and wash the fertile 
chemical constituents of the ash into the soil, he 
attacks it with his hoe, drops in a few handfuls of 
millet, and the year's work is over. But a few weeks 
off and on are required for these operations, and lie 
may then go to sleep till the rains are over, assured 
of a crop which never fails, which is never poor, and 
which will last him till the rains return again. 

Between the acts he does nothing but lounge and 
sleep ; his wife, or wives, are the millers and bakers ; 
they work hard to prepare his food, and are rewarded 
by having to take their own meals apart, for no Afri- 
can would ever demean himself by eating with a 
woman. I have tried to think of something else that 
these people habitually do, but their vacuous life 
leaves nothing more to tell. 

Apart from eating, their sole occupation is to talk, 
and this they do unceasingly, emphasizing their words 
with a marvellous wealth of gesticulation. Talking, 
indeed, is an art here — the art it must once have been 
in Europe before the newspaper drove it out of 
fashion. The native voices are sometimes highly 
musical, though in the strict sense the people have 
no notion whatever of singing ; and the languages 
themselves are full*of melody. Every word, like the 



THE UFA E T OF AFRICA. 4 1 

Uta end. i» • v.~l, "J f •» I«*Kt e,° ""' y 

drink ©omte; a national religion, the tear 01 en 
chink, P™™> , b f - lstice is a council of bead- 

r " iisrs* co u *£$£&?£ 

C^ZJ^Z^S^ no »« thingin 
SX but has its. embryo and prophecy .n the 
8im pler life of these «™f wtata *• T° ^J™ 

v,nt t-hpse men are animals; out rne e)B u ^ 

looks on them with a kindlier and more instructed 

sense. They are what we were onee; possibly they 

m-iv hppnme what we are now. 

m «,Xr, is to become of this strange people 

and their land? With.the glowing figures of a very 
distinguished traveller in our minds, «f^ e *£££ 
that the Shire and Congo routes have buttobeo„ 
neeted with New York and Manchester to .cause at 
once a revolution among the people ot Airica ana in 
once a levoiuu t, j t cntlC isms 

the commerce ot the \voi la . >v e ™ M 

upon that subject. One complains that while , au. 
Stanley emphasizes in the most convincing way the 
thousands of miles of cloth the African is waiting to 

lc We rom Europe, he is all but silent as to what 
Furone is to get in return. A second remark is that 

Afiica has nothing to give in return, and never will 

h! The facts of the case briefly, as it seems to me, are 

t,,e Fir : sI The only thing of value the interior of 
Africa produces at present in any quantity is ivory 
There is still, undoubtedly, a supply of this F^ous 
Material in the country-a supply which i may las yet 
for fifteen or twenty years. But it is well to tiamfl 



42 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

future calculation on the certainty of this abnormal 
source of wealth ceasing, as it must do, in the imme- 
diate future. 

Second, Africa already produces in a wild state a 
number of vegetable and other products of consider- 
able commercial value ; and although the soil can 
only be said to be of average fertility, there is practi- 
cally no limit to the extent to which these could be 
developed. 

Wild indigo — the true indigofera tinctoria is already 
growing on the hills of the interior. The Londol- 
phia, an indiarubber-bearing creeper, is to be seen on 
most of the watercourses ; and a variety of the Ficus 
elastica, the well-known rubber plant, abounds on 
Lake Nyassa. The orchilla weed is common. The 
castor-oil plant, ginger, and other spices, the tobacco- 
plant, the cotton-plant, and many fibre -yielding 
grasses, are also found ; and oil-seeds of every variety 
and in endless quantity are grown by the natives for 
local use. 

The fatal drawback, meantime, to the further devel- 
opment of these comparatively invaluable products is 
the transit, carriage to the coast from Nyassa or Tan- 
ganyika being almost prohibitive. Up till very 
recently only two native products have ever been 
exported from this region — indiarubber and beeswax, 
and these in but trifling quantity. But there is no 
reason why these products should not be largely 
developed, and freights must become lower and lower 
every year. In addition to the plants named, the 
soil of Central Africa is undoubtedly adapted for 
growing coffee ; and the Cinchona would probably 
flourish well on the higher grounds of the Tangan- 
yika plateau. 

I must not omit to mention in this connection that 
an attempt is now being made, and so far with marked 
success, to form actual plantations in the interior of 
Africa ; and the result of the experiment ought to 
be watched with exceptional interest. Mr. Moir, on 



THE HEART OF AFRICA. 43 

behalf of the African Lakes Company, and the Brothers 
Buchanan on their own account, and also Mr. Scott, 
with remarkable industry and enterprise have each 
formed at Blantyre a coffee plantation of consider- 
able size. The plants, when I saw them, were still 
young, but very healthy and promising, and already 
a first crop of fine coffee-berries hung from the trees, 
and has since been marketed. These same gentlemen 
have also grown heavy crops of wheat; and Mr. 
Buchanan has succeeded well with sugar-cane, pota- 
toes and other English vegetables. The manual work 
here has been entirely done by natives ; and an im- 
mense saving to resident Europeans will be effected 
when the interior is able to provide its own food 
supplies, for at. present wheat, coffee, and sugar, have 
all to be imported from home. 

With so satisfactory an account of the possibilities 
of the country, the only question that remains is this 
— Can the African native really be taught to work ? 

This question I answer unhesitatingly in the affirm- 
ative. 1 have described Africa as a nation of the/ 
unemployed. But the sole reason for the current im- 
pression that the African is an incorrigible idler is 
that at present there is really nothing for him to do. 
But that he can work and will work when the oppor- 
tunity and inducement offer has been proved by 
experiment. The coast native, as all must testify who 
have seen him in the harbor of Zanzibar, Mozambique, 
Delagoa Bay, Natal, or the other eastern ports, is, 
with all allowances, a splendid worker ; and though 
the experiment has seldom been tried in the interior, 
it is w r ell known that the capacity is there, and 
wherever encouraged yields results beyond all expec- 
tation. Probably the severest test to which the native 
of Central Africa has ever been put is the construc- 
tion of the Stevenson road, between Lakes Nyassa 
and Tanganyika. Forty -six miles of that road — 
probably the only thing of the kind in Central Africa 
— have already been made entirely by native labor, 



44 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

and the work could not have been better done had it 
been executed by English navvies. I have watched 
by the day a party of seventy natives workino- at a 
cutting upon that road. Till three or four years ;i cr 
none of them had ever looked upon a white man ■ 
nor, till a few months previously, had one of them 
seen a spade, a pickaxe, or a crowbar. Yet these 
. savages handled their tools to such purpose that, with 
only a single European superintendent, they have 
made a road, full of difficult cuttings and gradients, 
which would not disgrace a railway contractor at 
home, ihe workmen keep regular hours— six in the 
morning till five at night, with a rest at mid-day-, 
work steadily, continuously, willingly, and above all, 
merrily. Ihis goes on, observe, in the heart of the 
tropics, almost under the equator itself, where the 
white mans energy evaporates, and leaves him so 
limp that he cannot even be an example to his men 
1 his goes on too without any compulsion ; the natives 
flock from far and near, sometimes from long dis- 
tances, to try this new sensation of work. These 
men are not slaves, but volunteers ; and though they 
are paid by the fortnight, many will remain at their 
post the whole season through. The only bribe for 
all this work is a yard or two of calico per week per 
man ; so that it seems to me one of the greatest 
problems of the future of Africa is here solved In 
capacity the African is fit to work, in inclination he 
is willing to work, and in actual experiment he has 
done it ; so that with capital enlisted and wise heads 
to direct these energies, with considerate employers 
who will remember that these men are but children 
this vast nation of the unemployed may yet be added 
to the slowly growing list of the world's producers. 

Africa at this moment has an impossible access, a 
perilous climate, a penniless people, an undeveloped 
soil. So once had England. It may never be done ; 
otner laws may operate, unforeseen factors may inter- 
lere; but there is nothing in the soil, the products, 



THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA. 45 

the climate, or the people of Africa, to forbid its 
joining even at this late day in the great march of 
civilization. 



IV. 

THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA. 

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE. 

The life of the native African is not all idyll. It 
is darkened by a tragedy whose terrors are unknown 
to any other people under heaven. Of its mild 
domestic slavery I do not speak, nor of its revolting 
witchcraft, nor of its endless quarrels and frequent 
tribal wars. These minor evils are lost in the shadow 
of a great and national wrong Among these simple 
and unprotected tribes, Arabs — uninvited strangers 
of another race and nature — pour in from the North 
and East, with the deliberate purpose of making tins 
paradise a hell. It seems the awful destiny of this 
homeless people to spend their lives in breaking up 
the homes of others. Wherever they go in Africa 
the followers of Islam are the destroyers of peace, the 
breakers up of the patriarchal life, the dissolvers of 
the family tie. Already they hold the whole Conti- 
nent under one reign of terror. They have effected 
this in virtue of one thing — they possess firearms ; 
and they do it for one object — ivory and slaves, for 
these two are one. The slaves are needed to buy 
ivory with ; then more slaves have to be stolen to 
carry it. So living man himself has become the 
commercial currency of Africa. He is locomotive, he 
is easily acquired, he is immediately negotiable. 

Arab encampments for carrying on a wholesale 
trade in this terrible commodity are now established 
all over the heart of Africa. They are usually con- 
nected with wealthy Arab traders at Zanzibar and 



46 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

other places on the coast, and communication is kept 
up by caravans which pass, at long intervals, from 
one to the other. Being always large and well 
supplied with the material of war, these caravans 
have at their mercy the feeble and divided native 
tribes through which they pass, and their trail across 
the Continent is darkened with every aggravation of 
tyranny and crime. They come upon the scene sud- 
denly ; they stay only long enough to secure their 
end, and disappear only to return when a new crop 
has arisen which is worth the reaping. 

Sometimes these Arab traders will actually settle 
for a year or two in the heart of some quiet com- 
munity in the remote interior. They pretend perfect 
friendship ; they molest no one ; they barter honestly. 
They plant the seeds of their favorite vegetables and 
fruits — the Arab always carries seeds with him — as 
if they meant to stay for ever. Meantime they buy 
ivory, tusk after tusk, until great piles of it are buried 
beneath their huts and all their barter-goods are gone. 
Then one day, suddenly, the inevitable quarrel is 
picked. And then follows a wholesale massacre. 
Enough only are spared from the slaughter to carry 
the ivory to the coast; the grass-huts of the villages 
are set on fire ; the Arabs strike camp ; and the 
slave-march, worse than death, begins. 

This last act in the drama, the slave-march, is the 
aspect of slavery which, in the past, has chiefly 
aroused the passions and the sympathy of the outside 
world, but the greater evil is the demoralization and 
disintegration of communities by which it is neces- 
sarily preceded. It is essential to the traffic that the 
region drained by the slaver should be kept in per- 
petual political ferment; that, in order to prevent 
combination, chief should be pitted against chief ; 
and that the moment any tribe threatened to assume 
a dominating strength it should either be broken up 
by the instigation of rebellion among its depend- 
encies, or made a tool of at their expense. The inter- 



THE HE A H T-DTSEA SE OF A FR WA. 47 

relation of tribe with tribe is so intricate that it is 
impossible to exaggerate the effect of disturbing the 
equilibrium at even a single centre. But, like a 
river, a slave-caravan has to be fed by innumerable 
tributaries all along its course — at first in order to 
gather a sufficient volume of human bodies for the 
start, and afterwards to replace the frightful loss by 
desertion, disablement, and death. 

Many at home imagine that the death-knell of 
slavery was struck with the events which followed 
the death of Livingstone. In the great explorer's 
time we heard much of slavery ; we were often 
appealed to ; the Government busied itself ; some- 
thing was really done. But the wail is already for- 
gotten, and England hears little now of the open 
sore of the world. But the tragedy I have alluded 
to is repeated every year and every month — witness 
such recent atrocities as those of the Upper Congo, 
the Kassai and Sankaru region described by Wiss- 
mann, of the Welle-Inakua district referred to by 
Van Gele. It was but yesterday that an explorer, 
crossing from Lake Nyassa to Lake Tanganyika, 
saw the whole southern end of Tanganyika peopled 
with large and prosperous villages. The next to 
follow him found not a solitary human being — 
nothing but burned homes and bleaching skeletons. 
It was but yesterday — the close of 1887 — that the 
Arabs at the north end of Lake Nyassa, after destroy- 
ing fourteen villages with many of their inhabitants, 
pursued the population of one village into a patch 
of tall dry grass, set it on fire, surrounded it, and 
slew with the bullet and the spear those who crawled 
out from the more merciful flames. The Wa-Nkonde 
tribe, to which these people belonged, were, until 
this event, one of the most prosperous tribes in 
East Central Africa. They occupied a country of 
exceptional fertility and beauty. Three rivers, which 
never failed in the severest drought, run through 
their territory, and their crops were the richest and 



48 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

most varied in the country. They possessed herds 
of cattle and goats; they fished in the lake Avith 
nets ; they wrought iron into many-patterned spear- 
heads with exceptional ingenuity and skill; and that 
even artistic taste had begun to develop among 
them was evident from the ornamental work upon 
their huts, which were themselves unique in Africa 
for clever construction and beauty of design. This 
people, in short, by their own inherent ability and 
the natural resources of their country, were on the 
high road to civilization. Now, mark the swift 
stages in their decline and fall. Years ago an almost 
unnoticed rill from that great Arab stream, which 
with noiseless current and ever-changing bed has 
never ceased to flow through Africa, trickled into 
the country. At first the Arab was there on suffer- 
ance; he paid his way. Land was bought from the 
Wa-Nkonde chiefs, and their sovereignty acknowl- 
edged. The Arab force grew. In time it developed 
into a powerful incursion, and the Arabs began 
openly to assert themselves. One of their own 
number was elevated to the rulership, with the title 
of " Sultan of Nkonde." The tension became great, 
and finally too severe to last. After innumerable 
petty fights the final catastrophe was hurried on, 
and after an atrocious carnage the remnant of the 
Wa-Nkonde were driven from their fatherland. Such 
is the very last chapter in the history of Arab rule in 
Africa. 

The Germans, the Belgians, the English, and the 
Portuguese, are crying out at present for territory in 
Central Africa. Meantime humanity is crying out 
for someone to administer the country; for some 
one to claim it, not by delimiting a frontier-line upon 
a map with colored crayons, but by seeing justice 
done upon the spot; for some one with a strong arm 
and a pitiful heart to break the Arab yoke and keep 
these unprotected children free. It has been reserved 
for a small company of English gentlemen to arrest 



THE HE. 1 ll T-DI8 EASE OF A FllICA. 49 

the hand of the raider in the episode I have just 
described. While Germany . covets Nyassa-land, 
while Portugal claims it, while England has sent a 
consul there, without protection, to safeguard British 
missionary and trading interests, two agents of the 
African Lakes Company, two missionaries, the Brit- 
ish Consul at Mozambique, with two companions 
who happened to be in Nyassa-land on scientific work, 
have, at the risk of their lives, averted further war, 
and with their own rifles avenged the crime. 

But this fortuitous concourse of English rifles 
cannot be reckoned upon every day ; nor is it the 
part of the missionary and the trader to play the 
game of war. The one thing needed for Africa at 
present is some system of organized protection to 
the native, and the decisive breaking of the Arab 
influence throughout the whole interior. These 
events at Lake Nyassa have brought this subject 
once more before the civilized world, and I may 
briefly state the situation as it at present stands. 

Five years ago the British cruisers which had 
been for years engaged in suppressing the slave-trade 
were tempted to relax their efforts. They had done 
splendid service. The very sight of the great hull of 
the London, as she rocked in the harbor of Zanzibar, 
had a pacific influence; and as the caravans from the 
interior came and went at intervals of years and 
found the cruiser's cannon still pointing to their sul- 
tan's palace, they carried the fear of England over 
the length and breadth of Africa. The slave-trade 
was seriously discouraged, and, so far as the coast 
traffic was concerned, it was all but completely 
arrested. What work, up to this point, was done, 
was well done ; but, after all, only half the task had 
ever been attempted. It was not enough to stop the 
sewer at its mouth ; its sources in the heart of Africa 
should have been sought out and purified. But now 
that even the menace at Zanzibar no longer threat- 
ened the slavers, their work was resumed with re- 



50 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

doubled energy. The withdrawal of the London 
was interpreted to mean either that England con- 
ceived her work to be done or that she had grown 
apathetic and would interfere no more. 

The consequences were almost immediately dis- 
astrous. A new license to devastate, to murder, and 
to enslave, was telegraphed all over Africa, and 
speedily found expression, in widely separated parts 
of the country, in horrors the details of which can 
never be known to the civilized world. The disturb- 
ances on Lake Nyassa undoubtedly belong, though 
indirectly, to this new category of crime. Already 
the Arabs have learned that there is no one now to 
take them to task. In one district after another they 
have played their game and won ; and with ample 
power, with absolute immunity from retribution, and 
with the sudden creation of a new demand for slaves 
in a quarter of which I dare not speak further here, 
their offenses can only increase in number and 
audacity. It is remarkable in the Wa-Nkonde epi- 
sode that, for the first time probably in Central 
Africa, the Mohammedan defiance to the Christian 
power was open and undisguised. Hitherto the 
Arab worked in secret. The mere presence of a 
white man in the country was sufficient to stay his 
hand. On this occasion the Arab not only did not 
conceal his doings from the Europeans, nor flee 
when he was remonstrated with, but turned and 
attacked his monitors. The political significance of 
this is plain. It is part of a policy. It is a challenge 
to Europe from the whole Mohammedan power. 
Europe in Africa is divided ; Mohammedanism is 
one. No isolated band of Arabs would have ven- 
tured upon such a line of action unless they were 
perfectly sure of their ground. Nor is there any 
reason why they should not be sure of their ground. 
Europe is talking much about Africa ; it is doing 
nothing. This the Arab has discerned. It is one of 
the most astounding facts in morals that England 



THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA. 51 

should have kept the Arab at bay so long. Bat the 
time of probation is over. And the plain issue is 
now before the world — Is the Arab or the European 
henceforth to rei^n in Africa ? 

How the European could reign in Africa is a 
simple problem. The real difficulty is as to who in 
Europe will do it. Africa is claimed by everybody, 
and it belongs to nobody. So far as the Nyassa 
region is concerned, while the Portuguese assert their 
right to the south and west, scarcely one of them has 
ever set foot in it: and while the Germans claim the 
north and east, their pretension is based neither upon 
right of discovery, right of treaty, right of purchase, 
right of conquest, nor right of possession, but on the 
cool audacity of some chartographer in Berlin, who, 
in delineating a tract of country recognized as Ger- 
man by the London Convention of 1886, allowed 
his paint-brush to color some tens of thousands of 
square miles beyond the latitude assigned. To 
England it is a small matter politically who gets 
Africa. But it is of moment that those who secure 
the glory of annexation should not evade the duty 
of administration. The present condition of Africa 
is too critical to permit so wholesale a system of 
absentee landlordism ; and it is the duty of England, 
so far at least as the Nyassa region is concerned, 
to insist on the various claimants either being true 
to their assumed responsibilities or abandoning a 
nominal sovereignty. 

It is well known, — it is certain, — that neither 
Portugal nor Germany will ever administer this 
region. If they would, the problem would be solved, 
and England would gladly welcome the release ; the 
release, for, although England has never aided this 
country with a force of arms, she has for some time 
known that in some wa}^, direct or indirect, she 
ought to do it. This country is, in a special sense, 
the protege of England. Since Livingstone's death 
the burden of it has never really left her conscience. 



52 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

The past relation of England to Nyassa-land, and 
her duty now, will be apparent from the following 
simple facts : — ■ 

Lake Nyassa was discovered by David Living- 
stone. At that time he was acting as Her Majesty's 
Consul, and was sent to Africa with a Government 
Expedition, which was equipped not to perform an 
exceptional and romantic piece of work, but in 
accordance with a settled policy on the part of Eng- 
land. "The main object of the Zambesi Expedi- 
tion," says Livingstone, u as our instructions from 
Her Majesty's Government explicitly stated, was to 
extend the knowledge already attained of the geog- 
raphy, and mineral and agricultural resources, of 
Eastern and Central Africa ; to improve our acquaint- 
ance with the inhabitants, and to endeavor to engage 
them to apply themselves to industrial pursuits, and 
to the cultivation of their lands, with a view to the 
production of raw material to be exported to Eng- 
land in return for British manufactures ; and it was 
hoped that, by encouraging the natives to occupy 
themselves in the development of the resources of 
the country, a considerable advance might be made 
towards the extinction of the slave-trade, as they 
would not be long in discovering that the former 
would eventually be a more certain source of profit 
than the latter. Tbe Expedition was sent in accord- 
ance with the settled policy of the English Govern- 
ment; and the Earl of Clarendon being then at the 
head of the Foreign Office, the Mission was organized 
under his immediate care. When a change of Gov- 
ernment ensued we experienced the same generous 
countenance and sympathy from the Earl of Malmes- 
bury as we had previously received from Lord 
Clarendon ; and on the accession of Earl Russell to 
the high office he has so long filled we were always 
favored with equally ready attention and the same 
prompt assistance. Thus the conviction teas produced 
that our work embodied the principles not of any one 



THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA. S3 

party, hut of the hearts of the statesmen and of the peo- 
ple of England generally." 

Encouraged by this national interest in Africa, the 
churches of England and Scotland attempted to fol- 
low up the work of Livingstone in one at least of 
its aspects, by sending missionaries into the country. 
These have already succeeded in establishing them- 
selves in one district after another, and are daily 
extending in numbers and influence. 

In order to perpetuate a scarcely less important 
branch of the movement initiated by Livingstone, 
— a department specially sanctioned, as the above 
extract shows, by the English Government — the 
African Lakes Company was formed in 1878. Its 
object was to open up and develop the regions of 
East Central Africa from the Zambesi to Tangan- 
yika; to make employments for the native peoples, 
to trade with them honestly, to keep out rum, and, 
so far as possible, gunpowder and firearms, and to 
co-operate and strengthen the hands of the mission- 
ary. It lias already established twelve trading sta- 
tions, manned by a staff of twenty-five Europeans 
and many native agents. The llala on Lake Nyassa 
belongs to it; and it has just placed a new steamer 
to supersede the Lady Nyassa on the river Shire. It 
lias succeeded in starting a flourishing coffee planta- 
tion in the interior, and new sources of wealth are 
being gradually introduced. For the first time, on 
the large scale, it has taught the natives the meaning 
and the blessings of work. It lias acted, to some 
extent, as a check upon the slave-trade ; it has pre- 
vented inter-tribal strife, and helped to protect the 
missionaries in time of war. The African Lakes 
Company, in short, modest as is the scale on which 
it works, and, necessarily limited as are its oppor- 
tunities, has been for years the sole administering 
hand in this part of Africa. This Company does not 
exist for gain ; — or exists for gain only in the sense 
that commercial soundness is the only solid basis on 



M TROPICAL AFRICA. 

which to build up an institution which can perma- 
nently benefit others. A large amount of private 
capital has been expended by this Company ; yet, 
during all the years it has carried on its noble enter- 
prise, it has re-invested in Africa all that it has taken 
from it. 

t All this British capital, all the capital of the Mis- 
sions, all these various and not inconsiderable agen- 
cies, have been tempted into Africa largely in°the 
hope that the old policy of England would not only 
be continued but extended. England has never in 
theory departed from the position she assumed in the 
days of the .Zambesi Expedition. On the contrary, 
she has distinctly recognized the relation between 
her Government and Africa. She has continued to 
send out British Consuls to be the successors of Liv- 
ingstone in the Nyassa region. When the first of 
these, Captain Eoote, R. N., died in the Shire High- 
lands in 1884, the English Government immediately 
sent another to take his place. But this is the last 
thing that has been done. The Consul is there as a 
protest that England has still her eye on Africa. But 
Africa needs more than an eye. And when, as hap- 
pened the other day, one of Her Majesty's represent- 
atives was under Arab fire for five days and nights 
on the shores of Lake Nyassa, this ivas brought home 
to us in such practical fashion as to lead to the hope 
that some practical measures will now be taken. 

I do not presume to bring forward a formal pro- 
posal; but two things occur to one as feasible, and 
I shall simply name them. The first is for England, 
or Germany, or France, or some one with power and 
earnestness, to take a firm and uncompromising stand 
at Zanzibar. Zanzibar, as the Arab capital, is one of 
the keys of the situation, and any lesson taught here 
would be learned presently by the whole Moham- 
medan following in the country. 

The other key to the situation is the vast and 
splendid water-way in the heart of Africa— the Up- 



THE HE A R T-DISEA SE OF A FR1CA. 55 

per Shire*, Lake Nyassa, Lake Tanganyika, and the 
Great Lakes generally. As a base for military or 
patrol operations nothing better coulcl be desired 
than these great inland seas. A small steamer upon 
each of them — or, to begin with, upbn Nyassa and 
Tanganyika — with an associated depot or two of 
armed men on the higher and healthier plateaux 
which surround them, would keep the whole country 
quiet. Only a trifling force of well-drilled men 
would be needed for this purpose. They might be 
whites, or blacks and whites; they might be Sikhs or 
Pathans from India; and the expense is not to be 
named considering the magnitude of the results — 
the pacification of the entire equatorial region — that 
would be achieved. That expense could be borne 
by the Missions, but it is not their province to em- 
ploy the use of force ; it could be borne by the Lakes 
Company, only they deserve protection from others 
rather than that this should be added to the large 
debt civilization already owes them ; it coukl be done 
by the Free Congo State, — and if no one else is 
shamed into doing it, this further labor of love may 
fall into its hands. But whether alone, or in co- 
operation with the few and overburdened capitalists 
of the country, or in conjunction with foreign pow- 
ers, England will be looked to to take the initiative 
with this or a similar scheme. 

The barriers in the way of Government action are 
only two, and neither is insurmountable. The one is 
Portugal, which owns the approaches to the countiy ; 
the other is German}^, which has inland interests of 
her own. Whether England could proceed in the 
face of these two powers would simply depend on 
how it was done. As a mere political move such an 
occupation of the interior might at once excite alarm 
and jealousy. But wearing the aspect of a serious 
mission for the good of Africa, instigated not by the 
Foreign Office but by the people of England, it is 
impossible to believe that the step could either be 



S6 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

misunderstood or opposed. It is time the nations 
looked upon Africa as something more than a chess- 
board. And even if it were but a chess-board, the 
players on every hand are wise enough to know that 
whatever is honestly done to relieve this suffering 
continent will react in a hundred ways upon the in- 
terests of all who hold territorial rights within it. 

A beginning once made, one might not be unduly 
sanguine in anticipating that the meshes of a pacific 
and civilizing influence would rapidly spread through- 
out the country. Already the missionaries are pion- 
eering every where, prepared to slay and do their part ; 
and asking no more from the rest of the world than a 
reasonable guarantee that they should be allowed to 
live. Already the trading companies are there, from 
every nationality, and in every direction ready to 
open up the country, but unable to go on with any 
confidence or enthusiasm till their isolated interests 
are linked together and secured in the presence of a 
common foe. The territories of the various colonies 
are slowly converging upon the heart of Africa, and 
to unite them in an informal defensive alliance would 
not be impossible. With Emm Pasha occupying the 
field in the north; with the African Lakes Company 
the British East African Association, and the German' 
Association, m the east; with the Congo Free State 
m the west, and British Bechuanaland in the south 
a cordon is already thrown around the Great Lakes 
region, which requires only to have its several parts 
connected with one another and with central forces 
on the Lakes, to secure the peace of Africa. 



Wanderings on the n yassa-tanganyika. 57 



V. 

WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA- 
TANGANYIKA PLATEAU. 

I 

A TRAVELLER S DIARY. 

With a glade in the forest for a study, a bale of 
calico for a table, and the sun vertical and some- 
thing under a billion centigrade, diary- writing in the 
tropics is more picturesque than inspiring. To keep a 
journal, however, next to keeping his scalp, is the one 
thing for which the consistent traveller will go through 
fire and water; and the dusky native who carries the 
faded note-books on the march is taught to regard the 
sacredness of his office more than if he drove the car 
of Juggernaut. The contents of these mysterious 
note-books, nevertheless, however precious to those 
who write them, are, like the photographs of one's 
relations, of pallid interest to others, and I have there- 
fore conscientiously denied myself the joy of exhibit- 
ing such offspring of the wilderness as I possess to 
my confiding reader. 

But as the diary form has advantages of its own, 
I make no apology at this stage for transcribing and 
editing a few rough pages. Better, perhaps, than by 
a more ordered narrative, they may help others to 
enter into the traveller's life, and to illustrate what 
the African traveller sees and hears and does. I 
shall disregard names, and consecutive dates, and 
routes. My object is simply to convey some impres- 
sion of how the world wags in a land unstirred by 
civilization, and all but untouched by time. 

29th September. — Left Karongas, at the north end 
of Lake Nyassa, at 10.30, with a mongrel retinue of 
seven Mandalla natives, twelve Bandawe* Atongas, 



58 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

six Chingus, and my three faithfuls — Jingo, Moolu, 
and Seyid. Total twenty-eight. Not one of my men 
could speak a word of English. They belonged to 
three different tribes and spoke as many languages ; 
the majority, however, knew something of Chinanja, 
the lake language, of which I had also learned a 
little, so we soon understood one another. It is 
always a wise arrangement to have different tribes in 
a caravan, for in the event of a strike, and there are 
always strikes, there is less chance of concerted 
action. Each man carried on his head a portion of 
my purse — which in this region consists solely of 
cloth and beads ; while one or two of the more depend- 
able were honored with the transportation of the 
tent, collecting-boxes, provisions, and guns. 

The road struck into a banana grove, then through 
a flat country fairly well wooded with a variety of 
trees, including many palms and a few baobabs. The 
native huts dotted over this rich flat are the best I 
have seen in Africa. The roofs are trimly thatched, 
and a rude carving adorns door-post and lintel. After 
seven miles the Rukuru is crossed — a fine stream 
rippling over the sand, with large flakes of mica 
tumbling about in the current, and sampling the 
rocks of the distant hills. The men laid down their 
loads, and sprawled about like crocodiles in the water 
as I waded across. A few yards off is a village, 
where a fire was quickly lit, and the entire popula- 
tion turned out to watch the white man nibble his 
lunch. The consumption at this meal being some- 
what slight, and the menu strange to my audience, I 
saw that they regarded the white man's effort at 
nutrition with feelings of contempt. "The M'sungu 
eats nothing," whispered one, " he must die." The 
head man presently came asking beads ; but, as I had 
none unpacked, two stray trinkets and a spoonful of 
salt more than satisfied him. On getting the salt he 
deftly twisted a leaf into a little bag, and after pour- 
ing all the salt into it, graciously held out his hand 



WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA TANGANYIKA. 59 

to a troop of small boys who crowded round, and 
received one lick each of his empty palm. Salt is 
perhaps the greatest luxury and the greatest rarity 
the north-end African can have, and the avidity with 
which these young rascals received their homoeo- 
pathic allowance proved the instinctiveness of the 
want. I have often offered native boys the choice 
between a pinch of salt and a knot of sugar, and 
they never failed to choose the first. For return- 
present the chief made over to me two large gourds 
filled with curds, of which, of course, I pretended to 
drink deeply before passing it on to the men. 

Three miles of the same country, with tall bean- 
plants about, castor oil, and maize, but no villages 
in sight. Bananas unusually fine, and Borassus every- 
where. At the tent or eleventh mile we reached the 
fringe of hills bordering the higher lands, and, taking 
advantage of a passage about half a mile wide which 
has been cut by the river, penetrated the first barrier 
— a low rounded hill of conglomerate, fine in texture, 
and of a dark-red-color. Flanking this for two miles, 
we entered a broad oval expansion among the hills, 
the site apparently of a former lake. Winding along 
with the river for a mile or two more, and passing 
through a narrow and romantic glen, we emerged in 
a second valley, and camped for the night on the 
banks of the stream. On the opposite side stood a 
few native huts, and the occupants, after much re- 
connoitring, were induced to exchange some ufa and 
sweet potatoes for a little cloth. 

1st October. — Moolu peered into my tent with the 
streak of dawn to announce a catastrophe. Four of 
the men had run away daring the night. All was 
going so well yesterday that I flattered myself I was 
to be spared this traditional experience — the most 
exasperating of all the traveller's woes, for the whole 
march must be delayed until fresh recruits are enlisted 
to carry the deserters' loads. The delinquents were 
all Bandawe men. They had no complaint. They stole 



60 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

nothing. It was a simple case of want of pluck. They 
were going into a strange land. The rainy season 
was coming on. Their loads were full-weight. So 
they got homesick and ran. I had three more Ban- 
dawe men in the caravan, and, knowing well that the 
moment they heard the news they would go and do 
likewise, I ordered them to be told what had hap- 
pened and then sent to my tent. In a few moments 
they appeared ; but what to say to them ? Their 
dialect was quite strange to me, and yet I felt I must 
impress them somehow. Like the judge putting on 
the black cap, I drew my revolver from under my 
pillow, and, laying it before me, proceeded to address 
them. Beginning with a few general remarks on 
the weather, I first briefly sketched the geology of 
Africa, and then broke into an impassioned defence of 
the British Constitution. The three miserable sinners 
—they had done nothing in the world— quaked like 
aspens. I then followed up my advantage by inton- 
ing in a voice of awful solemnity, the enunciation of 
the Forty-Seventh Proposition of Euclid, and then 
threw my all into a blood-curdling Quod erat demon- 
strandum. Scene two followed when I was alone ; I 
turned on my pillow and wept for shame. It was a 
prodigious piece of rascality, but I cannot imagine 
anything else that would have done, and it succeeded 
perfectly. These men were to the end the most 
faithful I had. They felt thenceforth they owed me 
their lives ; for, according to African custom, the . 
sins of their fellow-tribesmen should have been visited 
upon them with the penalty of death. 

Seyid and Moolu scoured the country at once for 
more carriers, but met with blank refusals on every 
side. Many natives passed the camp, but they 
seemed in unusual haste, and something of local 
importance was evidently going on. We were not 
long in doubt as to its nature. It was war. The 
Angoni were in force behind a neighboring hill, and 
had already killed one man. This might have been 



WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA TANGANYIKA. 61 

startling, but I treated it as a piece of gossip, until 
suddenly a long string of armed and painted men 
appeared in sight and rushed past me at the double. 
They kept perfect step, running in single file, their 
feet adorned with anklets of rude bells which jingled 
in time and formed quite a martial accompaniment. 
The center man held aloft a small red and white flag, 
and eacli warrior carried a large shield and several 
light barbed spears. The regiment was led by a 
fantastic looking creature, who played a hideous 
slogan on a short pan-pipe. This main body was 
followed at intervals by groups of twos and threes 
who had been hastily summoned from their work, 
and I must say the whole turnout looked very like 
business. The last of the warriors had scarcely 
disappeared before another procession of a different 
sort set in from the opposite direction. It consisted 
of .the women and children from the threatened 
villages farther up the valley. It was a melting 
sight. The poor creatures were of all ages and sizes, 
from the tottering grandmother to the week old 
infant. On their heads they carried a miscellaneous 
collection of household gods, and even the little 
children were burdened with a calabash, a grass-mat, 
a couple of fowls, or a handful of sweet-potatoes. 
Probably the entire effects of the villages were 
represented in these loads. Amongst the fugitives 
were a few goats and one or two calves, and a troop 
of boys brought up the rear driving before them a 
herd of cows. The poor creatures quickened their 
pace as they passed my tent, and eyed me as furtively 
as it' I and my men had been a detachment from the 
Ancroni executinor a flank movement. The hamlet 

o 

opposite our camp, across the river, which had glad- 
dened us the night before with its twinkling fires, its 
inhabitants sitting peacefully at their doors or fishing 
in the stream, was already deserted — the men to fight, 
the woman to flee for their lives they knew not 
whither. This is a common chapter in African 



62 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

history. Except among the very largest tribes no 
man can call his home his own for a month. 

I was amazed at the way my men treated the affair. 
They lounged about camp with the most perfect 
indifference. This was accounted for by my presence. 
The mere presence of a white man is considered an 
absolute guarantee of safety in remoter Africa. It is 
not his gun or his imposing retinue ; it is simply 
himself. He is not mortal, he is a spirit. Had I not 
been there, or had I shown the white feather, my 
men would have stampeded for Nyassa in a body. 
I had learned to understand the feeling so thoroughly 
that the events 01 the morning gave me no concern 
whatever, and I spent the day collecting in the usual 
way. 

It was impossible to go on and leave the loads; 
it was equally impossible to get carriers at hand. 
So I despatched Seyid with a letter to the station 
on the Lake requesting six or eight natives to be 
sent from there. This meant a delay of two or three 
d'dys at least, which, with the rains so near, was 
serious for me. 

Made a " fly "for the tent, collected, and read. 
One only feels the heat when doing nothing. As 
the sun climbed to its zenith my men put up for 
themselves the most enticing bowers. They were 
ingeniously made with interlacing grasses and canes, 
and densely thatched with banana leaves. 

Tried twice to bake bread, with Jingo and Moolu 
as assistant cooks. Both attempts dismal failures, so 
I had to draw on the biscuit-tins. I have plenty of 
fowls, bought yesterday for beads. Maraya down 
with fever. One of the carriers, Siamuka, who had 
been left behind sick, straggled into camp, looking 
very ill indeed. Physicked him and gave him four 
yards of cloth to wrap himself in. Towards sunset 
I began to get anxious for news of battle. The 
arrival of the armed band which had passed in the 
morning soon gratified me. There had been no 



1 [ 'ANDERIXGS ON THE N TA SSu I- 1\ ING. 1 ZV VI AM. 63 

battle. There had been no Angoni. It was simply 
a scare — one of those false alarms which people in 
these unsettled circumstances are constantly liable to. 
All evening the women and children were trooping 
back to their homes ; and next morning our friends 
opposite were smoking their pipes at the doors again, 
as if nothing had happened. 

Tuesday, 2d October — After morning cocoa had 
a walk with my hammer to examine the sections in 
the valle} r . Back to a good breakfast, cooked with 
all the art of Jingo, the real cook being at Karongas 
with the flag of distress. Moolu ill. This is the 
third man down with fever since we left the Lake. 
Bought some ufa and beans. Dispensed needles, and 
bent pins for fish-hooks, among the men. Held a 
great washing with Jingo. Towards the afternoon 
the reinforcements arrived from Karonoras. The chief 
was drunk, it appeared, when my messenger reached 
him ; but Mr. Munro at the Lake kindly sent me a 
number of his own men. 

• Another of my carriers begged leave to dissolve 
our partnership, and produced two youths whom 
he had beguiled into taking his load. His plea was 
that he was in had odor at Mweni-wanda, and was 
afraid to go on. My own impression is that he found 
the load which he carried — on his head, like all 
Africans — was spoiling the cut of his hair. Even 
Africa has its exquisites, and this man was the swell 
all over. By " all over, " I mean, of course, all over 
his head, for as his hair is his only clothing, except 
the bark loin cloth of which the cut cannot well be 
varied, he had poured out the whole of his great soul 
upon his coiffure. At the best the African's hair is 
about the length of a toy-shop poodle's ; but vanity 
can make even a fool creative, and out of this scanty 
material and with extraordinary labor he had com- 
piled a masterpiece. First, heavily greased with 
ground-nut oil, it was made up into small-sized balls 
like black-currants, and then divided into symmetrical 



64 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

patterns, diamonds, circles, and parterres, designed 
with the skill of a landscape-gardener. To protect 
this work of art from nightly destruction, this gentle- 
man always carried with him a pillow of special 
make. It was constructed of wood, and dangled 
conspicuously from his spear-head on the march. He 
sold it to me ultimately for a yard of calico — and he 
certainly would not sleep after the transaction till he 
had laid the foundations of another. 

12th October. — Got under weight at early dawn. 
Much shirking and dodging among the men for light 
loads. Formerly sudden and suspicious fevers used 
to develop at this critical juncture — by a not unac- 
countable coincidence among the men with the 
heaviest loads ; but my now well-known mixture, 
compounded of pepper, mustard, cold tea, citrate of 
magnesia, Epsom salts, anything else that might be 
handy, and a flavoring pinch of cinchona, lias mirac- 
ulously stayed the epidemic. But I forgive these 
merry fellows everything for wasting none of the 
morning coolness over toilet or breakfast. I need 
not say the African never washes in the morning ; 
but, what is of more importance, he never eats. He 
rises suddenly from the ground where he has lain 
like a log all night, gives himself a shake, shoulders 
his load, and is off. Even at the mid-day halt he 
eats little ; but, if he can get it, will regale himself 
with a draught of water and a smoke. This last is 
a perfunctory performance, and one pipe usually 
serves for a dozen men. Each takes a whiff or two 
from the great wooden bowl, then passes it to his 
neighbor, and the pipe seldom makes a second round. 

1 often wondered how the natives produced a 
light when camping by themselves, and at last 
resolved to test it. So when the usual appeal was 
made to me for " motu," I handed them my vesta- 
box with a single match in it. I generally struck 
the match for them, this being considered a very 
daring experiment, and I felt pretty sure they would 



WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA-TANGANYIKA. f>5 

make a mess of their one chance. It turned oat as 
I anticipated, and when they handed back the empty 
box, I looked as abstracted and unapproachable as 
possible. After a little suspense, one of them slowly 
drew from the sewn-up monkey skin, which served 
for his courier-bag, a small piece of wood about 
three inches long. With a spear-head he cut in it a 
round hole the size of a threepenny-piece. Placing 
his spear-blade flat on the ground to serve as a base, 
he stretched over it a scrap of bark-cloth torn from 
his girdle, and then pinned both down with the 
perforated piece of wood, which a second native held 
firmly in position. Next he selected from among 
his arrows a slender stick of very hard wood, inserted 
it vertically in the hole, and proceeded to twirl it 
round with great velocity between his open palms. 
In less than half a minute the tinder was smoking 
sulkily, and after a few more twirls it w r as ready for 
further treatment by vigorous blowing, when it broke 
into active flame. The fire originates, of course, in 
the small soft piece of wood, from which sparks fall 
upon the more inflammable bark-cloth at the bottom 
of the hole. 

Our daily programme, on the march, was some- 
thing like this. At the first streak of dawn mv 
tent was struck. There is no time for a meal, for 
the cool early hour is too precious in the tropics to 
waste over eating ; but a hasty coffee while the loads 
were packing kept up the tradition of breakfast. In 
twenty minutes the men were marshalled, quarrels 
about an extra pound weight adjusted, and the pro- 
cession started. At the head of the column I usually 
walked myself, partly to see the country better, 
partly to look out for game, and partly, I suppose, 
because there was no one else to do it. Close 
behind me came my own special valet — a Makololo 
— carrying my geological hammer, water-bottle, and 
loaded rifle. The white man, as a rule, carries 
nothing except himself and a revolver, and possibly 



06 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

a double-awned umbrella, which, with a thick pith 
helmet, makes sunstrokes impossible. Next Jingo 
marched the cook, a plausible Mananja, who could 
cook little, except the version of where the missing 
victuals went to. After the cook came another 
gentleman's gentleman carrying a gun and the 
medicine chest, and after him the rank and file, with 
another gun-bearer looking out for deserters at the 
rear. From half-past five I usually trudged on till 
the sun made moving torture, about ten or eleven. 
When I was fortunate enough to find shade and 
water there was a long rest till three in the afternoon, 
and an anomalous meal, followed by a second march 
till sunset. The dreadful part of the day was the 
interval. Then observations were made, and speci- 
mens collected and arranged, each man having to fill 
a collecting-box before sunset. When this was over 
there was nothing else to do that it was not too hot 
to do. It was too hot to sleep, there was nothing to 
read, and no one to speak to ; the nearest post-office 
was a thousand miles off, and the only amusement 
was to entertain the native chiefs, who used occasion- 
ally to come with their followers to stare at the white 
man. These interviews at first entertained one vastly, 
but the humbling performances I had to go through 
became most intolerable. Think of having to stand 
up before a gaping crowd of savages and gravely 
button your coat — they had never seen a coat ; or, 
wonder of wonders, strike a match, or snap a revolver, 
or set fire to somebody's bark clothes with a burning- 
glass. Three or four times a day often I had to go 
through these miserable performances, and I have 
come home with a new sympathy for sword-swallow- 
ers, fire-eaters, the man with the iron jaw, and all 
that ilk. 

The interview commenced usually with the approach 
of two or three terror-stricken slaves, sent by the 
chief as a preliminary to test whether or not the 
white man would eat them. Their presents, native 



WANDERINGS OX THE NVASSA-TANGANT1KA. C7 

grains of some kind, being accepted, they concluded 
I was at least partly vegetarian, and the great man 
with his courtiers, armed with long spears, would 
advance and kneel down in a circle. A little speech- 
ifying followed, and then my return presents were 
produced — two or three yards of twopence-halfpenny 
calico ; and if he was a very great chief an empty 
Liebig pot or an old jam tin was also presented with 
great ceremony. None of my instruments, I found, 
at all interested these people — they were quite beyond 
them ; and I soon found that in my whole outfit 
there were not half a dozen things which conveyed 
any meaning to them whatever. They did not know 
enough even to be amazed. The greatest wonder of 
all perhaps was the burning-glass. They had never 
seen glass before, and thought it was mazi or water, 
but why the mazi did not run over when I put it in 
my pocket passed all understanding. When the light 
focused on the dry grass and set it ablaze their terror 
knew no bounds. u He is a mighty spirit!" they 
cried, "and brings down fire from the sun." This 
single remark contains the key to the whole secret 
of a white man's influence and power over all 
uncivilized tribes. Why a white man, alone and 
unprotected, can wander among these savage people 
without any risk from murder or robbery is a mystery 
at home. But it is his moral power, his education, 
his civilization. To the African the white man is a 
supreme being. His commonest acts are miracles; 
his clothes, his guns, his cooking utensils are super- 
natural. Everywhere his word is law. He can 
prevent death and war if he but speak the word. 
And let a single European settle, with fifty square 
miles of heathen round him, and in a short time he 
will be their king, their lawgiver, and their judge. 
I asked my men one day the question point blank — 
"Why do you not kill me and take my guns and 
clothes and beads ? " " Oh," they replied, " we would 
never kill a spirit." Their veneration for the white 



G8 TROPICAL AFTilCA. 

man indeed is sometimes most affecting. When war 
is brewing, or pestilence, they kneel before him and 
pray to him to avert it ; and so much do they believe 
in his omnipotence that an unprincipled man by 
trading on it, by simply offering pins, or buttons or 
tacks, or pieces of paper, or anything English, as 
charms against death, could almost drain a country 
of its ivory — the only native wealth. 

The real dangers to a traveller are of a simpler 
kind. Central Africa is the finest hunting country 
in the world. Here are the elephant, the buffalo, the 
lion, the leopard, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, 
the giraffe, the hyaena, the eland, the zebra, and 
endless species of small deer and antelope. Then 
the whole country is covered with traps to catch these 
animals — deep pits with a jagged stake rising up in 
the middle, the whole roofed over with turf and 
grass, so exactly like the forest bed that only the 
trained eye can detect their presence. I have found 
myself walking unconsciously on a narrow neck 
between two of these pits, when a couple of steps to 
either side would almost certainly have meant death. 
Snakes too, and especially the hideous and deadly 
puff adder, may turn up at any moment ; and in 
bathing, which one eagerly does at every pool, the 
sharpest lookout is scarcely a match for the diabolical 
craft of the crocodile. 

13th October. — Walking through the forest to-day 
some distance ahead of my men, I suddenly came 
upon a rhinoceros. The creature — the rhino is 
solitary in his habits — was poking about the bush with 
its head down and did not see me, though not ten 
yards separated us. My only arms were a geological 
hammer and a revolver, so I had simply to lie down 
and watch him. Presently my gun-bearer crawled 
up, but unfortunately by this time the pachyderm had 
vanished, and was nowhere to be found. I broke my 
heart over it at the moment, though why in the world I 



WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA-TANGANYIKA. 60 

should have killed him I do not in the least know 
now. In cold blood one resents Mr. Punch's typical 
Englishman — "What a heavenly morning! let's go 
and kill something ! " but in the presence of tempta- 
tion one feels the veritable savage. 

We are now at an elevation of about four thousand 
feet, and steadily nearing the equator, although the 
climate gives little sign of it. It is a popular mistake 
that the nearer one goes to the equator the tempera- 
ture must necessarily increase. Were this so, Africa, 
which is the most tropical continent in the world, 
would also be the hottest ; while the torrid zone, which 
occupies so large a portion of it, would be almost in- 
supportable to the European. On the contrary, the 
nearer one goes to the equator in Africa it becomes 
the cooler. The reasons for this are twofold — the 
gradual elevation of the continent towards the inte- 
rior, and the increased amount of aqueous vapor in 
the air. Central Africa is from three to five thousand 
feet above the level of the sea. Now for every three 
hundred feet of ascent the thermometer falls one de- 
gree. It is immensely cooler, therefore, in the inte- 
rior than at the coast ; and the equatorial zone all over 
the world possesses a climate in every way superior 
to that of the borders of the temperate region. At 
night, in Equatorial Africa, it is really cold, and one 
seldom lies down in his tent with less than a couple 
of blankets and a warm quilt. The heat of New 
York is often greater than that of Central Africa ; for 
while in America a summer rarely passes without the 
thermometer reaching three figures, in the hottest 
month in Africa my thermometer never registered 
more than two on a single occasion — the highest 
actual point reached being 9G°. Nowhere, indeed, in 
Africa have I experienced anything like the heat of 
a summer in Malta, or even of a stifling August in 
Southern Germany or Italy. On the other hand, the 
direct rays of the sun are necessarily more powerful 
in Africa; but so long as one keeps in the shade — 



70 TliOPICAL AFRICA. 

and even a good umbrella suffices for this — there is 
nothing in the climate to disturb one's peace of mind 
or body. When one really feels the high tempera- 
ture is when down with fever ; or when fever, un- 
known to one, is coming on. Then, indeed, the heat 
becomes maddening and insupportable ; nor has the 
victim words to express his feelings towards the glit- 
tering ball, whose daily march across the burnished 
and veilless zenith brings him untold agony. 

15th to 22d October — This camp is so well situated 
that I have spent the week in it. The programme 
is the same every day. At dawn Jingo came to my 
tent with early coffee. Went out with my gun for a 
morning stroll, and returned in an hour for breakfast. 
Thereafter I sorted the specimens captured the day 
before, and hung up the fatter insects to dry in the sun. 
Routing the ants from the boxes and provision stores 
was also an important and vexatious item. Some 
ants are so clever that they can break into everything, 
and others so small that they will crawl into anything ; 
and between the clever ones, and the small ones, 
and the jam-loving ones, and the flour-eating ones 
and the specimen-devouring ones, subsistence, not to 
say science, is a serious problem. The only things 
that have hitherto baffled them are the geological 
specimens; but I overhaul these regularly every 
morning along with the rest, in terror of one day 
finding some precocious creature browsing off my 
granites. After these labors I repaired to a natural 
bower in the dry bed of a shaded streamlet, where I 
spent the entire day. Here, even at high noon, was 
perfect coolness, and rest, and solitude unutterable. 
I lay among birds and beasts and flowers and insects, 
watching their ways, and trying to enter into their un- 
known lives. To watch uninterruptedly the same 
few yards of universe unfold its complex history ; 
to behold the hourly resurrection of new living things, 
and miss no change or circumstance, even of its 



WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA-TANGANYIKA. 71 

minuter parts ; to look at all, especially the things 
you have seen before, a hundred times, to do all with 
patience and reverence — this is the only way to 
study nature. 

Towards the afternoon the men began to drop in 
with their boxes of insects, each man having to collect 
a certain number every camp-day. If sufficient were 
not brought in the delinquent had to go back to the 
bush for more. At five or six I went back to my tent 
for dinner, and after an hour over the camp-fire turned 
in for the night. The chattering of the men all round 
the tent usually kept me awake for an hour or two. 
Their merriest time is just after sunset, when the great 
u fa-feast of the day takes place. The banter between 
the fires is kept up till the small hours, and the chief 
theme of conversation is always the white man him- 
self — what the whit man did, and what the white 
man said, and how the white man held his gun, and 
everything else the white man thought, looked, willed, 
wore, ate, or drank. My object in being there was an 
insoluble riddle to them, and for what witchcraft I col- 
lected all the stones and insects was an unending 
source of speculation. 

That they entered to some extent into one at least 
of these interests w r as proved that very night. I was 
roused rather late by a deputation, who informed me 
that they had just discovered a very uncommon object 
crawling on a stick among the firewood. Going out 
to the fire and stirring the embers into a blaze, I was 
shown one of the most extraordinary insects it has 
been my lot to look upon. Rather over two inches 
in length, the creature lay prone upon a branch, 
adroitly shamming death, after the manner of the 
Mantidce, to which it obviously belonged. The strik- 
ing feature was a glittering coal-black spiral, with a 
large central spot of the same color, painted on the 
middle of the back ; the whole resembling a gigantic 
eye, staring out from the body, and presenting the 
most vivid contrast to the lemon yellows and greens 



72 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

of the rest of the insect. One naturally sought a 
mimetic explanation of the singular marking, and I 
at once recalled a large fringed lichen which covered 
many of the surrounding trees, and of which this 
whole insect was a most apt copy. That it was as rare 
as it was eccentric was evident from the astonishment 
of the natives, who declared that they had never 
seen it before. 

22d October. — Water has been scarce for some days, 
and this morning our one pool was quite dried up, 
so I struck camp. Marching northwest, over an 
undulating forest country, we came to a small village, 
near which was a running stream. The chief, an 
amiable old gentleman, after an hour spent in sus- 
picious prospecting, came to see the show, and pro- 
pitiated its leading actor with a present of flour. 
In return I gave him some cloth and an empty mag- 
nesia bottle to hold his snuff. The native snuff-mull 
is a cylinder of wood profusely carved, and, in the 
absence of a pocket, hangs tied round the neck with 
a thong. Snuffing is universal hereabouts. 

This is a hotter camp than the last, though the 
elevation (4500 feet) is nearly the same. Paid the 
men their fortnight's wage in cloth, and as I threw 
in an extra fathom they held high revelry till far on 
in the night. 

24th October. — Buffalo fever still on. Sallied 
forth early with Moolu, a large herd being reported 
at hand. We struck the trail after a few miles, but 
the buffaloes had moved away, passing up a steep 
valley to the north and clearing a hill. I followed, 
but saw no sign, and after one or two unsuccessful 
starts gave it up, as the heat had become terrific. 
Breakfasted off wild honey, which one of the natives 
managed to lay hands on, and sent for the camp to 
come up. Moolu went on with one native, T'Shaula 
— he of the great spear and the black feathers. 



WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA TANGANYIKA. 73 

They returned about two o'clock announcing that 
they had dropped two bull buffaloes, but not being 
mortally wounded the quarry had made off. Late 
in the afternoon two of my men rushed in saying 
that one of the wounded buffaloes had attacked two 
of their number, one severely, and that assistance 
was wanted to carry them back. It seems that five 
of the men, on hearing Moolu's report about the 
wounded buffaloes, and tempted by the thought of 
fresh meat, set off without permission to try to secure 
them. It was a foolhardy freak, as they had only 
a spear with them, and a wounded buffalo bull is 
the most dangerous animal in Africa. It charges 
blindly at anything, and even after receiving its mor- 
tal wound has been known to kill its assailant. The 
would-be hunters soon overtook one of the creatures, 
a huge bull, lying in a hollow, and apparently in 
articulo mortis. They calmly walked up to it — the 
maddest thing in the world — when the brute sud- 
denly roused itself and charged headlong. They ran 
for their lives one was overtaken and trampled down 
in a moment ; the second was caught up a few yards 
farther on and literally impaled on the animal's horns. 
The first hobbled into camp little the worse, but the 
latter was brought in half dead. He had two fright- 
ful wounds, the less serious on the back behind the 
shoulder-blade, the other a yawning gash just under 
the ribs. I fortunately had a little lint and dressed 
his wounds as well as I could, but I thought he would 
die in my hands. He was quite delirious, and I 
ordered a watch all night in case the bleeding should 
break out afresh. His nurses unhappily could not 
take in the philosophy of this, and I had to turn out 
every hour to see that they were not asleep. The 
native's conception of pain is that it is the work of 
an evil spirit, and the approved treatment consists in 
blowing upon the wound and suspending a wooden 
charm from the patient's neck to exorcise it. All 
this was duly done now, and the blowing was re- 
peated at frequent intervals through the night. 



74 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

25t7i October. — Kacquia conscious, and suffering 
much. It is impossible to go on, so the men have 
rigged up a bower for me on the banks of a stream 
near the camp. Read, wrote, physicked right and 
left, and received the Chief of Something-or-other. 
Bribed some of his retinue to search the district for 
indiarubber, and bring specimens of the trees. After 
many hours, absence they brought me back two 
freshly-made balls, but neglected to bring a branch, 
which was what I promised to pay them for. From 
their description I gather the tree is the Landolphia 
vine. The method of securing the rubber is to make 
incisions in the stem and smear the exuding milky 
juice over their arms and necks. After it has dried 
a little they scrape it off and roll it up into balls. 

An instance of what the native will do for a scrap 
of meat. Near camp this morning Moolu pointed 
out to me a gray lump on the top of a very high 
tree, which he assured me was an animal. It was a 
kind of lemur, and very good to eat. I had only 
my Winchester with me, and the ball ripped up the 
animal, which fell at once, but leaving an ounce or 
two of viscera on the branch. One of the men, 
Makata, coining up at the sound of the shot, per- 
ceived that the animal was not all there— it had been 
literally "cleaned" — immediately started to climb 
the tree for the remainder. It was a naked stem for 
a considerable height and thicker than himself, but 
he attacked it at once native fashion, i.e, by walking 
up the trunk, his clasped hands grasping the trunk 
on the opposite side from his doubled-up body, and 
literally walking upward on his soles. He soon came 
down with the precious mess, and in a few minutes 
it was cooked and eaten. 

To-night I thought my hour was come. Our camp 
was right in the forest ; it was pitch dark ; and I 
was sitting late over the smouldering fire with the 
wounded man. Suddenly a terrific yell rang out 
from the forest, and a native rushed straight at me 



WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA-TANGANYIKA. 75 

brandishing his spear and whooping at the pitch of his 
voice. Sure that it was an attack, I darted towards 
the tent for my rifle, and in a second every man in the 
camp was huddling in it likewise. Some dashed in 
headlong by the door, others under the canvas, until 
there was not room to crawl among their bodies. 
Then followed — nothing. First an awful silence, 
then a whispering, then a mighty laughter, and then 
the whole party sneaked out of the fort and yelled 
Avith merriment. One of my own men had crept out 
a few yards for firewood ; he had seen a leopard, and 
lost control of himself — that was all. It was hard to 
say who was most chaffed about it ; but I confess I 
did not realize before how simple a business it would 
have been for any one who did not approve of the 
white man to exterminate him and his caravan. 

Sunday, 28th October. — My patient holding on ; will 
now probably pull through. As lie lias to be fed on 
liquids, my own fowls have all gone in chicken soup. 
Fowls are now very scarce, and my men, taking ad- 
vantage of the high premium and urgent demand, 
have gone long distances to get them. They will not 
supply them to the invalid, but sell them to me to 
give him. Wishing to teach them a lesson in phil- 
anthropy, I declined to buy any more on these terms; 
and after seeing me go three days dinnerless to give 
Kacquia his chance of life they became ashamed of 
themselves, and handed me all the fowls they had in 
a present. This was a prodigious effort for a native, 
and proves him capable of better things. The whole 
camp had been watching this b}'play for a day or two, 
and the finish did good all round — more especially as 
I gave a return present, after a judicious interval, 
worth five times what had been given me. 

Held the usual service in the evening — a piece of 
very primitive Christianity. Moolu, who had learned 
much from Dr. Laws, undertook the sermon, and dis- 
coursed with great eloquence on the Tower of Babel. 



76 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

The preceding Sunday he had waxed equally warm 
over the Rich Man and Lazarus; and his description 
of the Rich Man in terms of native ideas of wealth — 
" plenty of calico and plenty of beads " — was a thing 
to remember. "Mission-blacks," in Natal and at the 
Cape, are a byword among the unsympathetic ; but I 
never saw Moolu do an inconsistent thing. He could 
neither read nor write ; he knew only some dozen 
words of English; until seven years ago he had never 
seen a white man ; but I could trust him with every- 
thing I had. He was not "pious"; he was neither 
bright nor clever; he was a commonplace black; but 
he did his duty and never told a lie. The first night 
of our camp, after all had gone to rest, I remember 
being roused by a low talking. I looked out of my 
tent; a flood of moonlight lit up the forest; and 
there, kneeling upon the ground, was a little group 
of natives, and Moolu in the centre conducting even- 
ing prayers. Every night afterwards this service was 
repeated, no matter how long the march was nor how 
tired the men. I make no comment. But this I will 
say — Moolu's life gave him the right to do it. Mis- 
sion reports are often said to be valueless ; they are 
less so than anti-mission reports. I believe in mis- 
sions, for one thing, because I believe in Moolu. 

But I need not go on with this itinerary. It is very 
much the same thing over again, For some time yet 
you must imagine the curious procession I have 
described wandering hither and thither among the 
wooded mountains and valleys of the table-land, and 
going through the same general programme. You 
might have seen its chief getting browner and browner 
in the tropical sun, his clothes getting raggeder and 
raggeder, his collecting-boxes becoming fuller and 
fuller, and his desire to get home again growing 
stronger and stronger. Then you might have seen 
the summer end and the tropical rains begin, and the 
whole country suddenly clothe itself with living 
green. And then, as the season advanced, you might 




NEST OF THF WHITE ANT. 
1, Male. 2, 4, 5, Neuters. 3, Gravid Female. 



THE WHITE ANT. 77 

have seen him plodding back to the Lake, between 
the attacks of fever working his way down the Shire 
and Zambesi, and so, after many days, greeting the 
new spring in England. 



VI. 
THE WHITE ANT. 

A THEORY. 

A few years ago, under the distinguished patron- 
age of Mr. Darwin, the animal in vogue with scien- 
tific society was the worm. At present the fashion- 
able animal is the ant. I am sorry, therefore, to have 
to begin by confessing that the insect whose praises 
I propose to sing, although bearing the honored 
name, is not entitled to consideration on account of 
its fashionable connections, since the white ant, as an 
ant, is an impostor. It is, in fact, not an ant at all, 
but belongs to a much humbler family — that of the 
Termitidce — and so far from ever having been the 
vogue, this clever but artful creature is hated and 
despised by all civilized peoples. Nevertheless, if I 
mistake not, there is neither among the true ants, nor 
among the worms, an insect which plays a more won- 
derful or important part in nature. 

Fully to appreciate the beauty of this function, a 
glance at an apparently distant aspect of nature will 
be necessary as a preliminary. 

When we watch the farmer at work, and think how 
he has to plough, harrow, manure, and humor the 
soil before even one good crop can be coaxed out of 
it, we are apt to wonder how nature manages to 
secure her crops and yet dispense with all these acces- 
sories. The world is one vast garden, bringing forth 
crops of the most luxuriant and varied kind century 



78 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

after century, and millennium after millennium. 
Yet the face of nature is nowhere furrowed by the 
plough, no harrow disintegrates the clods, no lime and 
phosphates are strewn upon its fields, no visible 
tillage of the soil improves the work on the great 
world's farm. 

Now, in reality, there cannot be crops, or succes- 
sions of crops, without the most thorough agriculture ; 
and when we look more closely into nature we dis- 
cover a system of husbandry of the most surprising 
kind. Nature does all things unobtrusively ; and it 
is only now that we are beginning to see the magni- 
tude of these secret agricultural operations by which 
she does already all that man would wish to imitate, 
and to which his most scientific methods are but 
clumsy approximations. 

In this great system of natural husbandry nature 
uses agencies, implements, and tools of many kinds. 
There is the disintegrating frost, that great natural 
harrow, which bursts asunder the clods b} T the ex- 
pansion during freezing of the moisture imprisoned in 
their pores. There is the communistic wind which 
scatters broadcast over the fields the finer soil in 
clouds of summer dust. There is the rain which 
washes the humus into the hollows, and scrapes bare 
the rocks for further denudation. There is the air 
which, with its carbonic acid and oxygen, dissolves 
and decomposes the stubborn hills, and manufactures 
out of them the softest soils of the valley. And 
there are the humic acids, generated through decay, 
which filter through the ground and manure and 
enrich the new-made soils. 

But this is not all, nor is this enough ; to prepare 
a surface film, however rich, and to manure the soil 
beneath, will secure one crop, but not a succession of 
crops. There must be a mixture and transference of 
these layers, and a continued mixture and transfer- 
ence, kept up from age to age. The lower layer of 
soil, exhausted with bringing forth, must be trans- 



THE WHITE ANT. 70 

ferred to the top for change of air, and there it must lie 
for a long time, increasing its substance, and recruit- 
ing "its strength among the invigorating elements. 
The upper film, restored, disintegrated, saturated with 
fertility and strength, must next be slowly lowered 
down again to where the rootlets are lying in wait for 
it, deep in the under soil. 

Now how is this last change brought about? Man 
turns up the crust with the plough, throwing up the 
exhausted earth, down the refreshed soil, with infinite 
toil and patience. And nature does it by natural 
ploughmen who, with equal industry, are busy all 
over the world reversing the earth's crust, turning it 
over and over from year to year, only much more 
slowly and much more thoroughly, spadeful by spade- 
ful, foot by foot, and even grain by grain. Before 
Adam delved the Garden of Eden these natural agri- 
culturists were at work, millions and millions of them 
in every part of the globe, at different seasons and in 
different ways, tilling the world's fields. 

According to Mr. Darwin, the animal which per- 
forms this most important function in nature is the 
earthworm. The marvellous series of observations 
by which the great naturalist substantiated his con- 
clusion are too well known for repetition. Mr. 
Darwin calculates that on every acre of land in Eng- 
land more than ten tons of dry earth are passed 
through the bodies of worms and brought to the 
surface every year ; and he assures us that the whole 
soil of the country must pass and repass through 
their bodies every few years. Some of this earth is 
brought up from a considerable depth beneath the 
soil, for, in order to make its subterranean burrow, 
the animal is compelled to swallow a certain quan- 
tity of earth. It eats its way, in fact, to the surface, 
and there voids the material in a little heap. Al- 
though the proper diet of worms is decaying vegeta- 
ble matter, dragged down from the surface in the 
form of leaves and tissues of plants, there are many 



80 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

occasions on which this source of aliment fails, and 
the animal has then to nourish itself by swallowing 
quantities of earth, for the sake of the organic sub- 
stances it contains. In this way the worm has a 
twofold inducement to throw up earth. First, to 
dispose of the material excavated from its burrow ; 
and, second, to obtain adequate nourishment in times 
of famine. " When we behold a wide, turf-covered 
expanse," says Mr. Darwin, " we should remember 
that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty 
depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having 
been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous 
reflection that the whole of the superficial mould 
over any such expanse has passed, and will again 
pass, every few years, through the bodies of worms. 
The plough is one of the most ancient and most valu- 
able of man's inventions ; but long before he existed 
the land was, in fact, regularly ploughed by earth- 
worms. It may be doubted whether there are many 
other animals which have played so important a part 
in the history of the world as have these lowly organ- 
ized creatures."* 

Now, without denying the very important contri- 
bution of the earthworm in this respect, a truth suffi- 
ciently endorsed by the fact that the most circum- 
stantial of naturalists has devoted a whole book to 
this one animal, I would humbly bring forward an- 
other claimant to the honor of being, along with the 
worm, the agriculturist of nature. While admitting 
to the fullest extent the influence of worms in coun- 
tries which enjoy a temperate and humid climate, it 
can scarcely be allowed that the same influence is 
exerted, or can possibly be exerted, in tropical lands. 
No man was less in danger of taking a provincial 
view of nature than Mr. Darwin, and in discussing 
the earthworm he has certainly collected evidence 
from different parts of the globe. He refers, al- 

* Vegetable Mould and Earth Worms, p. 313. 




wmmmMMM 

A, Male. B, Worker. C, Soldier. D, Fecundated Female of Termes bellicosus, 
natural size, surrounded by "Workers." 



THE WHITE ANT. 81 

though sparingly, and with less than his usual wealth 
of authorities, to worms being found in Iceland, in 
Madagascar, in the United States, Brazil, New South 
Wales, India, and Ceylon. But his facts, with re- 
gard especially to the influence, on the large scale, 
of the worm in warm countries, are few or wholly 
wanting. Africa, for instance, the most tropical 
country in the Avorld, is not referred to at all ; and 
where the activities of worms in the tropics are de- 
scribed, the force of the fact is modified by the state- 
ment that these are only exerted during the limited 
number of weeks of the rainy season. 

The fact is, for the greater portion of the year in 
the tropics the worm cannot operate at all. The 
soil, baked into a brick by the burning sun, abso- 
lutely refuses a passage to this soft and delicate 
animal. All the members of the earthworm tribe, 
it is true, are natural skewers, and though boring is 
their supreme function, the substance of these skewers 
is not hardened iron, and the pavement of a tropical 
forest is quite as intractable for nine months in the 
year as are the frost-bound fields to the farmer's 
ploughshare. During the brief period of the rainy 
season worms undoubtedly carry on their function in 
some of the moister tropical districts; and in the 
sub-tropical regions of South America and India, 
worms, small and large, appear with the rains in end- 
less numbers. But on the whole the tropics proper 
seem to be poorly supplied with worms. In Central 
Africa, though 1 looked for them often, I never saw 
a single worm. Even when the rainy season set in, 
the closest search failed to reveal any trace either of 
them or of their casts. Nevertheless, so wide is the 
distribution of this animal, that in the moister re- 
gions even of the equatorial belt one should certainly 
expect to find it. But the general fact remains. 
Whether we consider the comparative poorness of 
their development, or the limited period during 
which they can operate, the sustained performance 



82 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

of the agricultural function by worms, over large 
areas in tropical countries, is impossible. 

Now as this agricultural function can never be 
dispensed with, it is more than probable that nature 
will have there commissioned some other animal to 
undertake the task. And there are several other 
animals to whom this difficult and laborious duty 
might be entrusted. There is the mole, for instance, 
with its wonderful spade-like feet, that natural navvy, 
who shovels the soil about so vigorously, at home ; 
but against the burnt crust of the tropics even this 
most determined of burrowers would surely turn the 
edge of his nails. The same remark applies to those 
curious little geologists the marmots and skipmunks, 
which one sees throwing up their tiny heaps of sand 
and gravel on the American prairies. And though 
the torrid zone boasts of a strong-limbed and almost 
steel-shod creature, the ant-bear, his ravages are 
limited to the destruction of the nests of ants ; and 
however much this somewhat scarce animal contri- 
butes to the result, we must look in another direction 
for the true tropical analogue of the worm. 

The animal we are in search of, and which I vent- 
ure to think equal to all the necessities of the case, 
is the termite or white ant. It is a small insect, with 
a bloated, yellowish-white body, and a somewhat 
large thorax, oblong-shaped, and colored a disa- 
greeable oily brown. The flabby, tallow-like body 
makes this insect sufficiently repulsive, but it is for 
quite another reason that the white ant is the worst 
abused of all living vermin in warm countries. The 
termite lives almost exclusively upon wood ; and the 
moment a tree is cut or a log sawn for any econom- 
ical purpose, this insect is upon its track. One 
may never see the insect, possibly, in the flesh, for 
it lives underground ; but its ravages confront one 
at every turn. You build your house, perhaps, and 
for a few months fancy you have pitched upon the 
one solitary site in the country where there are no 



THE WHITE ANT. 83 

white ants. But one day suddenly the door-post 
totters, and lintel and rafters come down together 
with a crash. You look at a section of the wrecked 
timbers, and discover that the whole inside is eaten 
clean away. The apparently solid logs of which the 
rest of the house is built are now mere cylinders of 
bark, and through the thickest of them you could 
push your little finger. Furniture, tables, chairs, 
chests of drawers, everything made of wood, is in- 
evitably attacked, and in a single night a strong 
trunk is often riddled through and through, and 
turned into matchwood. There is no limit, in fact, 
to the depredation by these insects, and they will 
eat books, or leather, or cloth, or anything; and in 
many parts of Africa I believe if a man lay down to 
sleep with a wooden leg it would be a heap of saw- 
dust in the morning. So much feared is this insect 
now, that no one in certain parts of India and Africa 
ever attempts to travel with such a thing as a wooden 
trunk. On the Tanganyika plateau I have camped 
on ground which was as hard as adamant, and as 
innocent of white ants apparently as the pavement 
of St. Paul's, and wakened next morning to find a 
stout wooden box almost gnawed to pieces. Leather 
portmanteaus share the same fate, and the only sub- 
stances which seem to defy the marauders are iron 
and tin. 

But what has this to do witli earth or with agri- 
culture? The most important point in the work of 
the white ant remains to be noted. I have already 
said that the white ant is never seen. Why he 
should have such a repugnance to being looked at 
is at first sight a mystery, seeing that he himself is 
stone blind. But his coyness is really due to the 
desire for self-protection, for the moment his juicy 
body shows itself above ground there are a dozen 
enemies waiting to devour it. And yet the white 
ant can never procure any food until it comes above 
ground. Nor will it meet the case for the insect to 



84 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

come to the surface under the shadow of night. 
Night in the tropics, so far as animal life is con- 
cerned, is as the day. It is the great feeding time, 
the great fighting time, the carnival of the carnivores," 
and of all beasts, birds, and insects of prey from the 
least to the greatest. It is clear then that darkness 
is no protection to the white ant; and yet without 
coming out of the ground it cannot live. How does 
it solve the difficulty? It takes the ground out 
along with it. I have seen white ants working on 
the top of a high tree, and yet they were under- 
ground. They took up some of the ground with 
them to the tree-top ; just as the Esquimaux heap 
up snow, building it into the low tunnel-huts in 
which they live, so the white ant collects earth, only 
in this case not from the surface but from some 
depth underneath the ground, and plaster it into 
tunnelled ways. Occasionally these run along the 
ground, but more often mount in endless ramifica- 
tions to the top of trees, meandering along every 
branch and twig, and here and there debouching into 
large covered chambers which occupy half the girth 
of the trunk. Millions of trees in some districts are 
thus fantastically plastered over with tubes, galleries, 
and chambers of earth, and many pounds weight of 
subsoil must be brought up for the mining of even a 
single tree. The building material is convej-ed by 
the insects up a central pipe with which all the 
galleries communicate, and which at the downward 
end connects with a series of subterranean passages 
leading deep into the earth. The method of building 
the tunnels and covered waj^s is as follows : — At the 
foot of a tree the tiniest hole cautiously opens in the 
ground close to the bark. A small head appears 
with a grain of earth clasped in its jaws. Against 
the tree-trunk this earth-grain is deposited, and the 
head is withdrawn. Presently it reappears with 
another grain of earth, this is laid beside the first, 
rammed tight against it, and again the builder 



H 

3 
PI 

K 
O 
c| 

o 

O 

n 
w 

H 
K 

!► 




THE WHITE ANT. 85 

descends underground for more. The third grain is 
not placed against the tree, but against the former 
grain ; a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth follow, and the 
plan of the foundation begins to suggest itself as 
soon as these are in position, The stones or grains 
or pellets of earth are arranged in a semicircular 
wall, the termite, now assisted by three or four 
others, standing in the middle between the sheltering 
wall and the tree, and working briskly with head and 
mandible to strengthen the position. The wall in 
fact forms a small moon-rampart, and as it grows 
higher and higher it soon becomes evident that it is 
going to grow from a low battlement into along per- 
pendicular tunnel running up the side of the tree. 
The workers, safely ensconced inside, are now carry- 
ing up the structure with great rapidity, disappear- 
ing in turn as soon as they have laid their stone and 
rushing off to bring up another. The way in which 
the building is done is extremely curious, and one 
could watch the movement of these wonderful little 
masons by the hour. Each stone as it is brought to 
the top is first of all covered with mortar. Of course, 
without this the whole tunnel would crumble into 
dust before reaching the height of half an inch ; but 
the termite pours over the stone a moist sticky secre- 
tion, turning the grain round and round with its 
mandibles until the whole is covered with slime. 
Then it places the stone with great care upon the 
top of the wall, works it about vigorously for a 
moment or two till it is well jammed into its place, 
and then starts off instantly for another load. 

Peering over the growing wall, one soon discovers 
one, two, or more termites of a somewhat larger 
build, considerably longer and with a very different 
arrangement of the parts of the head, and especially 
of the mandibles. These important-looking indi- 
viduals saunter about the rampart in the most leis- 
urely way, but yet with a certain air of business, as 
if perhaps the one was the master of works and the 



86 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

other the architect. But closer observation suggests 
that they are in no wise superintending operations, 
nor in any immediate way contributing to the struc- 
ture, for they take not the slightest notice either of 
the workers or the works. They are posted there in 
fact as sentries, and there they stand, or promenade 
about, at the mouth of every tunnel, like sister Ann, 
to see if anybody is coming. Sometimes somebody 
does come in the shape of another ant — the real ant 
this time, not the defenceless Neuropteron, but some 
valiant and belted knight from the warlike Formicidce. 
Singly, or in troops, this rapacious little insect, fear- 
less in its chitinous coat of mail, charges down the 
tree-trunk, its antennae waving defiance to the enemy, 
and its cruel mandibles thirsting for termite blood. 
The worker white ant is a poor defenceless creature, 
and blind and unarmed, would fall an immediate 
prey to these well-drilled banditti, who forage about 
in every tropical forest in unnumbered legion. But 
at the critical moment, like Goliath from the Philis- 
tines, the soldier termite advances to the fight. 
With a few sweeps of its scythe-like jaws it clears 
the ground, and while the attacking party is carry- 
ing off its dead, the builders, unconscious of the fray, 
quietly continue their work. To every hundred 
workers in a white ant colony, which numbers many 
thousands of individuals, there are perhaps two of 
these fighting men. The division of labor here is 
very wonderful, and the fact that besides these two 
specialized forms there are in every nest two other 
kinds of the same insect, the kings and queens, shows 
the remarkable height to which civilization in these 
communities has attained. 

But where is this tunnel going to, and what object 
have the insects in view in ascending this lofty tree ? 
Thirty feet from the ground, across innumerable 
forks, at the end of a long branch, are a few feet of 
dead wood. How the ants know it is there, how 
they know its sap has dried up, and that it is now fit 



THE WHITE ANT. 87 

for the termites' food, is a mystery. Possibly they 
do not know, and are only prospecting on the chance. 
The fact that they sometimes make straight for the 
decaying limb argues in these intances a kind of 
definite instinct ; but, on the other hand, the fact 
that in most cases the whole tree, in every branch 
and limb, is covered with termite tunnels, would 
show perhaps that they work most commonly on 
speculation, while the number of abandoned tunnels, 
ending on a sound branch in a cut de sac, proves how 
often they must suffer the usual disappointments of 
all such adventurers. The extent to which these 
insects carry on their tunnelling is quite incredible 
until one lias seen it in nature with his own eyes. 
The tunnels are, perhaps, about the thickness of a 
small-sized gas-pipe, but there are junctions here and 
there of large dimensions, and occasionally patches 
of earthwork are found embracing nearly the whole 
trunk for some feet. The outside of these tunnels, 
which are never quite straight, but wander irregu- 
larly along stem and branch, resembles in texture a 
coarse sandpaper ; and the color, although this nat- 
urally varies with the soil, is usually a reddish brown. 
The quantity of earth and mud plastered over a 
single tree is often enormous ; and when one thinks 
that it is not only an isolated specimen here and there 
that is frescoed in this way, but often the whole of 
the trees of a forest, some idea will be formed of the 
magnitude of the operations of these insects and the 
extent of their influence upon the soil which they are 
thus ceaselessly transporting from underneath the 
ground. 

In travelling through the great forest of the Rocky 
Mountains or of the Western States, the broken 
branches and fallen trunks strewing the ground 
breast-high with all sorts of decaying litter frequently 
make locomotion impossible. To attempt to ride 
through these western forests, with their meshwork 
of interlocked branches and decaying trunks, is often 



88 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

out of the question, and one lias to dismount and 
drag his horse after him as if he were clambering 
through a woodyard. But in an African forest not 
a fallen branch is seen. One is struck at first at a 
certain clean look about the great forests of the 
interior, a novel and unaccountable cleanness, as 
if the forest-bed was carefully swept and dusted daily 
by unseen elves. And so, indeed, it is. Scavengers 
of a hundred kinds remove decaying animal matter 
— from the carcase of a fallen elephant to the broken 
wing of a gnat — eating it, or carrying it out of sight, 
and burying it on the deodorizing earth. And these 
countless millions of termites perform a similar 
function for the vegetable world, making away with 
all plants and trees, all stems, twigs, and tissues, the 
moment the ringer of decay strikes the signal. Con- 
stantly in these woods one comes across what appear 
to be sticks and branches and bundles of faggots, but 
when closely examined they are seen to be mere casts 
in mud. From these hollow tubes, which preserve 
the original form of the branch down to the minutest 
knot or fork, the ligneous tissue is often entirely 
removed, while others are met with in all stages of 
demolition. Examine the section of an actual speci- 
men, which is not yet completely destroyed, and from 
which the mode of attack may be easily seen. The 
insects start apparently from two centres. One 
company attacks the inner bark, which is the favor- 
ite morsel, leaving the coarse outer bark untouched, 
or more usually replacing it with grains of earth, 
atom by atom, as they eat it away. The inner bark is 
gnawed off likewise as they go along, but the woody 
tissue beneath is allowed to remain to form a pro- 
tective sheath for the second company who begin 
work at the centre. This second contingent eats its 
way outward and onward, leaving a thin tube of the 
outer wood to the last, as props to the mine, till they 
have finished the main excavation. When a fallen 
trunk lying upon the ground is the object of attack, 



2! 

H 

o 

W 
H 

► 




THE WHITE ANT. 89 

the outer cylinder is frequently left quite intact, and 
it is only when one tries to drag it off to his camp- 
fire that he finds to his disgust that he is dealing 
with a mere hollow tube a few lines in thickness filled 
up with mud. 

But the works above ground represent only a part 
of the labors of these slow-moving but most indus- 
trious of creatures. The arboreal tubes are only the 
prolongation of a much more elaborate system of sub- 
terranean tunnels, which extend over large areas and 
mine the earth sometimes to a depth of many feet or 
even yards. 

The material excavated from these underground 
galleries and from the succession of domed chambers 
— used as nurseries or granaries — to which they lead, 
has to be thrown out upon the surface. And it is 
from these materials that the huge ant-hills are reared, 
which form so distinctive a feature of the African 
landscape. These heaps and mounds are so conspic- 
uous that they may be seen for miles, and so numer- 
ous are they and so useful as cover to the sportsman, 
that without them in certain districts hunting would 
be impossible. The first things, indeed, to strike the 
traveller in entering the interior are the mounds of 
the white ant, now dotting the plain in groups like a 
small cemetery, now rising into mounds, singly or in 
clusters, each thirty or forty feet in diameter and ten 
or fifteen in height ; or, again, standing out against 
the sky like obelisks, their bare sides carved and 
fluted into all sorts of fantastic shapes. In India 
these ant-heaps seldom attain a height of more than 
a couple of feet, but in Central Africa they form 
veritable hills, and contain many tons of earth. The 
brick houses of the Scotch mission-station on Lake 
Nyassa have all been built out of a single ants' nest, 
and the quarry from which the material has been 
derived forms a pit beside the settlement some dozen 
feet in depth. A supply of bricks, as large again, 
could probably still be taken from this convenient 



90 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

depdt; and the missionaries on Lake Tanganyika and 
onwards to Victoria Nyanza have been similarly in- 
debted to the labors of the termites. In South Africa 
the Zulus and Kaffirs pave all their huts with white- 
ant earth ; and during the Boer war our troops in 
rraetona, by scooping out the interior from the 
smaller beehive-shaped ant-heaps, and covering the 
top with clay, constantly used them as ovens. These 
ant-heaps may be said to abound over the whole 
interior of Africa, and there are several distinct spe- 
cies. The most peculiar as well as the most ornate, 
is a small variety from one to two feet in height, 
which occurs in myriads along the shores of Lake 
Tanganyika. It is built in symmetrical tiers, and 
resembles a pile of small rounded hats, one above 
another, the rims depending like eaves, and shelter- 
ing the body of the hill from rain. To estimate the 
amount of earth per acre raised from the water-line 
of the subsoil by white ants would not in some dis- 
tricts be an impossible task ; and it would be found, 
probably, that the quantity at least equalled that 
manipulated annually in temperate regions by the 
earthworm. 

These mounds, however, are more than mere waste- 
heaps. Like the corresponding region underaround, 
they are built into a meshwork of tunnels, galleries,' 
and chambers, where the social interests of the com- 
munity are attended to. The most spacious of these 
chambers, usually far underground, is very properly 
allocated to the head of the society, the queen. The 
queen-termite is a very rare insect, and as there are 
seldom more than one, or at most two, to a colony, 
and as the royal apartments are hidden far in the 
earth, few persons have ever seen a queen, and indeed 
most, if they did happen to come across it, from its 
very singular appearance, would refuse to believe 
that it had any connection with white ants. It pos- 
sesses, indeed, the true termite head, but there the 
resemblance to the other members of the family stops, 



THE WHITE ANT. 91 

for the size of the head bears about the same propor- 
tion to the rest of the body as docs the tuft on his 
Glengarry bonnet to a six-foot Highlander. The 
phenomenal corpulence of the royal body in the case 
of the queen-termite is possibly due in part to want 
of exercise, for once seated upon her throne she never 
stirs to the end of her days. She lies there, a large, 
loathsome, cylindrical package, two or three inches 
long, in shape like a sausage, and as white as a bol- 
ster. Her one duty in life is to lay eggs, audit must 
be confessed she discharges her function with com- 
plete success, for in a single day her progeny often 
amounts to many thousands, and for months this 
enormous fecundity never slackens. The body in- 
creases slowly in size, and through the transparent 
skin the long folded ovary may be seen, with the 
eggs, impelled by a peristaltic motion, passing onward 
for 5 deli very to the workers who are waiting to carry 
them to the nurseries where they are hatched. Assid- 
uous attention, meantime, is paid to the queen by 
other workers, who feed her diligently, with much 
self-denial stuffing her with morsel after morsel from 
their own jaws. A guard of honor in the shape of a 
few of the larger soldier-ants is also in attendance as 
a last and almost unnecessary precaution. In addi- 
tion, finally, to the soldiers, workers, and queen, the 
royal chamber has also one other inmate — the king. 
He is a very ordinary-looking insect, about the same 
size as the soldiers, but the arrangement of the parts 
of the head and body is widely different, and like the 
queen he is furnished with eyes. 

Let me now attempt to show the way in which 
the work of the termites bears upon the natural 
agriculture and geology of the tropics. Looking at 
the question from the large point of view, the general 
fact to be noted is, that the soil of the tropics is in 
a state of perpetual motion. Instead of an upper 
crust, moistened to a paste by the autumn rains, and 
then baked hard as adamant in the sun ; and an under 



92 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

soil hermetically sealed from the air and light, and 
inaccessible to all the natural manures derived from 
the decomposition of organic matters — these two 
layers being eternally fixed in their relations to one 
another — we have a slow and continued transference 
of the layers always taking place. Not only to 
cover their depredations, but to dispose of the earth 
excavated from the underground galleries, the ter- 
mites are constantly transporting the deeper and ex- 
hausted soils to the surface. Thus there is, so to 
speak, a constant circulation of earth in the tropics, 
a ploughing and harrowing, not furrow by furrow 
and clod by clod, but pellet by pellet and grain by 
grain. 

Some idea of the extent to which the underlying 
earth of the tropical forests is thus brought to the 
surface will have been gathered from the facts 
already described ; but no one who has not seen it 
with his own eyes can appreciate the gigantic mag- 
nitude of the process. Occasionally one sees a whole 
trunk or branch, and sometimes almost an entire 
tree, so swathed in red mud that the bark is almost 
completely concealed, the tree looking as if it had 
been taken out bodily and dipped in some crystal- 
lizing solution. It is not only one tree here and 
there that exhibits the work of the white ant, but in 
many places the whole forest is so colored with dull 
red tunnels and patches as to give a distinct tone to 
the landscape — an effect which, at a little distance, 
reminds one of the abend-roth in a pine forest among 
the Alps. Some regions are naturally more favor- 
able than others to the operations of the termites ; 
and to those who have only seen them at work in 
India or in the lower districts of Africa this state- 
ment may seem an exaggeration. But on one range 
of forest-clad hills on the great plateau between Lake 
Nyassa and Tanganyika I have walked for miles 
through trees, every one of which, without exception, 
was ramified, more or less, with tunnels. The eleva- 



THE WHITE ANT 93 

tion of this locality was about 5000 feet above the sea 
and the distance from the equator some 9° ; but no- 
where else have I seen a spot where the termites were 
so completely masters of the situation as here. If it is 
the case that in these, the most elevated regions of 
Central Africa, the termite colonies attain their max- 
imum development, the fact is of much interest in 
connection with the geological and agricultural 
function which they seem to serve ; for it is here pre- 
cisely, before the rivers have gathered volume, that 
alluvium is most wanting; it is here that the tiny 
headwaters of these same rivers collect the earth for 
subsequent distribution over the distant plains and 
coasts ; and though the white ant may itself have no 
power, in the first instance, of creating soil, as a 
denuding and transporting agent, its ministry can 
scarcely be exaggerated. If this is its function in 
the economy of nature, it is certainly clear that the 
insect to which this task is assigned is planted where, 
of all places, it can most effectively fulfil the end. 

The direct relation of the termites' work to 
denudation will still farther appear if we try to 
imagine the effect upon the accumulations of earth 
pellets and grains of an ordinary rainy season. For 
two or three months in the tropics, though intermit- 
tently, the rains lash the forests and soils with a fury 
such as we, fortunately, have little idea of. And 
though the earthworks, and especially the larger 
ant-hills, have marvellous resisting properties, they 
are not invulnerable, and must ultimately succumb 
to denuding agents. The tunnels, being only required 
for a temporary purpose, are made substantial enough 
only to last the occasion. And in spite of the 
natural glue which cements the pellets of earth 
together, the structure, as a whole, after a little 
exposure, becomes extremely friable, and crumbles 
to pieces at a touch. When the earth-tubes crumble 
into dust in the summer season the debris is scattered 
over the country by the wind, and this way tends 



94 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

to increase and refresh the soil. During the rains, 
again, it is washed into the rivulets and borne away 
to fertilize with new alluvium the distant valleys, or 
carried downward to the ocean, where, along the 
coast line, it " sows the dust of continents to be." 
Herodotus, with equal poetic and scientific truth, 
describes Egypt as " the gift of the Nile." Possibly 
had he lived to-day he might have carried his vision 
farther back still, and referred some of it to the 
labors of the humble termites in the forest slopes 
about Victoria Nyanza. 



VII. 

MIMICRY. 

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS. 

Mimicry is imposture in nature. Carlyle in his 
blackest visions of " shams and humbugs" among 
human kind never saw anything so finished in hypoc- 
risy as the naturalist now finds in every tropical 
forest. There are to be seen creatures, not singly, 
but in tens of thousands, whose very appearance, 
down to the minutest spot and wrinkle, is an affront 
to truth, whose every attitude is a pose for a purpose, 
and whose whole life is a sustained lie. Before these 
masterpieces of deception the most ingenious of human 
impositions are vulgar and transparent. Fraud is 
not only the great rule of life in a tropical forest, 
but the one condition of it. 

Although the extraordinary phenomena of mimicry 
are now pretty generally known to science, few work- 
ers have yet had the opportunity of studying them 
in nature. But no study in natural history depends 
more upon observation in the field; for while in the 
case of a few mimetic forms — the Heliconidce, for 



MIMICRY. 95 

example — the imitated form is also an insect, and the 
two specimens may be laid side by side in the cabinet 
at home, the great majority of mimetic insects are 
imitations of objects in the environment which cannot 
be brought into comparison with them in the drawers 
of a museum. Besides this, it is not only the form 
but the behavior of the mimetic insect, its whole 
habit and habitat, that have to be considered; so that 
mere museum contributions to mimicry are almost 
useless without the amplest supplement from the field 
naturalist. I make no further apology, therefore, for 
transcribing here a few notes bearing upon this sub- 
ject from journals written during a recent survey of 
a region in the heart of Africa — the Nyassa-Tan- 
ganyika plateau — which has not yet been described 
or visited by any naturalist. 

The preliminaries of the subject can be mastered 
in a moment even by the uninitiated, and I may 
therefore begin with a short preface on animal color- 
ing in general. Mimicry depends on resemblances 
between an animal and some other object in its 
environment of which it is a practical gain to the 
creature to be a more or less accurate copy. The 
resemblance may be to any object, animate or inani- 
mate. It may be restricted to color, or it may ex- 
tend to form, and even to habit; but of these the first 
is by far the most imporant. 

Apart from sexual selection, color in animals 
mainly serves two functions. It is either " pro- 
tective" or " warning." The object of the first is to 
render the animal inconspicuous, the object of the 
second is the opposite — to make it conspicuous. 
Why it should be an object with some animals to be 
palpably exposed will be apparent from the following 
familiar instance of " warning" coloration. There 
are two great families of butterflies, the Danaidce 
and Acraiedce, which are inedible owing to the pres- 
ence in their bodies of acrid and unwholesome juices. 
Now to swallow one of these creatures — and birds, 



96 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

monkeys, lizards, and spiders are very fond of but- 
terflies — would be gratuitous. It would be disap- 
pointing to the eater, who would have to disgorge 
his pre}' immediately, and it would be an unnecessary 
sacrifice of the subject of the experiment. These 
butterflies, therefore, must have their disagieeable- 
ness in some way advertised, and so they dress up 
with exceptional eccentricity, distinguishing them- 
selves by loud patterns and brilliant colorings, so 
that the bird, the monkey, and the rest can take in 
the situation at a glance. These animated danger- 
signals float serenely about the forests with the utmost 
coolness in the broadest daylight, leisureliness, de- 
fiance and self-complacency marking their every 
movement, while their duskier brethren have to 
hurry through the glades in terror of their lives. For 
the same reason, well-armed or stinging insects are 
always conspicuously ornamented with warning colors. 
The expense of eating a wasp, for instance, is too 
great to lead to a second investment in thes ame 
insect, and wasps therefore have been rendered as 
showy as possible so that they may be at once seen 
and as carefully avoided. The same law applies to 
bees, dragonflies, and other gaudy forms; and it 
may be taken as a rule that all gayly-colored insects 
belong to one or other of these two classes: that is, 
that they are either bad eating or bad-stingers. Now 
the remarkable fact is that all these brilliant and un- 
wholesome creatures are closely imitated in outward 
apparel by other creatures not themselves protected 
by acrid juices, but which thus share the same im- 
munity. That these are cases of mimicry is certain 
from many considerations, not the least striking of 
which is that frequently one of the sexes is protec- 
tively colored and not the other. 

The brilliant coloring of poisonous snakes is 
sometimes set down by naturalists to " warning," but 
the details of coloring among reptiles have never been 
thoroughly worked out. The difficulty suggests 



MIMICRY. 97 

itself that if the vivid yellows and oranges of some 
snakes are meant to warn off dangerous animals, 
the same conspicnousness would warn off the ani- 
mals on which the venomous forms prey. Thus, 
while being hunted, a showy skin might be of ad- 
vantage to the snake ; in hunting it would be an 
equal disadvantage. But when one watches on the 
spot the manner in which snakes really do their 
hunting, it becomes probable that the coloring, 
vivid and peculiar as it is, in most cases is designed 
simply to aid concealment. One of the most beauti- 
ful and ornate of all the tropical reptiles is the puff- 
adder. This animal, the bite of which is certain 
death, is from three to five feet long, and dispropor- 
tionately thick, being in some parts almost as thick 
{is the lower part of the thigh. The whole body is 
ornamented with strange devices in green, yellow, 
and black, and lying in a museum its glittering coils 
certainly form a most striking object. But in na- 
ture the puff-adder has a very different background. 
It is essentially a forest animal, its true habitat be- 
ing among the fallen leaves in the deep shade of the 
trees by the banks of streams. Now in such a posi- 
tion, at the distance of a foot or two, its appearance 
so exactly resembles the forest bed as to be almost 
indistinguishable from it. I was once just throw- 
ing myself down under a tree to rest when, stoop- 
ing to clear the spot, I noticed a peculiar pattern 
among the leaves. I started back in horror to find 
a puff-adder of the largest size, its thick back only 
visible, and its fangs within a few inches of my face 
as I stooped. It was lying concealed among fallen 
leaves so like itself that, but for the exceptional 
caution which in African travel becomes a habit, I 
should certainly have sat down upon it, and to sit 
down upon a puff-adder is to sit down for the last 
time. I think this coloration in the puff-adder is 
more than that of warning, and that this semi-som- 
nolent attitude is not always the mere attitude of 



9S TROPICAL AFRICA. 

repose. This reptile lay lengthwise, concealed all 
but a few inches, among the withered leaves. Now 
the peculiarity of the puff-adder is that it strikes 
backward. Lying on the ground, therefore, it com- 
mands as it were its whole rear, and the moment any 
part is touched, the head doubles backward with in- 
conceivable swiftness, and the poison-fangs close 
upon their victim. The puff-adder in this way forms 
a sort of horrid trap set in the woods which may be 
altogether unperceived till it shuts with a sudden 
spring upon its prey. 

But that the main function of coloring is protec- 
tion may be decided from the simplest observation of 
animal life in any part of the world. Even among 
the larger animals, which one might suppose inde- 
pendent of subterfuge and whose appearance any- 
where but in their native haunts suggests a very 
opposite theory, the harmony of color with environ- 
ment is always more or less striking. When we look, 
for instance, at the coat of a zebra with its thunder- 
and-lightning pattern of black and white stripes, we 
should think such a conspicuous object designed to 
court rather than to elude attention. But the effect 
in nature is just the opposite. The black and white 
somehow take away the sense of a solid body al- 
together ; the two colors seem to blend into the 
most inconspicuous gray, and at close quarters the 
effect is as of bars of light seen through the branches 
of shrubs. I have found myself in the forest gazing 
at what I supposed to be a solitary zebra, its presence 
betrayed by some motion due -to my approach, and 
suddenly realized that I was surrounded by an entire 
herd which were all invisible until they moved. The 
motionlessness of wild game in the field when dan- 
ger is near is well known ; and every hunter is 
aware of the difficulty of seeing even the largest ani- 
mals though they are just standing in front of him. 
The tiger, whose stripes are obviously meant to imi- 
tate the reeds of the jungle in which he lurks, is no- 



MIMICRY. 99 

where found in Africa : but its beautiful cousin, the 
leopard, abounds in these forests, and its spotted pelt 
probably conveys the same sense of indistinctness as 
in the case of the zebra. The hippopotamus seems 
to find the deep water of the rivers — where it spends 
the greater portion of its time — a sufficient protec- 
tion ; but the crocodile is marvellously concealed by 
its knotted mud-colored hide, and it is often quite 
impossible to tell at a distance whether the objects 
lying along the river banks are alligators or fallen 
logs. 

But by far the most wonderful examples of pro- 
tective adjustments are found where the further dis- 
guise of form is added to that of color, and to this 
only is the term mimicry strictly applicable. The 
pitch of intricate perfection to which mimicry has 
attained in an undisturbed and unglaciated country 
like Central Africa is so marvellous and incredible, 
that one almost hesitates to utter what his eyes have 
seen. Before going to Africa I was of course famil- 
iar with the accounts of mimetic insects to be found 
in the works of Bates, Belt, Wallace, and other nat- 
uralists; but no description prepares one in the least 
for the surprise which awaits him when first he en- 
counters these species in nature. My introduction 
to them occurred on the borders of Lake Sliirwa — one 
of the smaller and less known of the great African 
lakes — and I shall record the incident exactly as I 
find it in my notes. I had stopped one day among 
some tall dry grass to mark a reading of the aneroid, 
when one of my men suddenly shouted " Chirombo ! " 
" Chirombo ? ' means an inedible beast of any kind, and 
I turned round to see where the animal was. The 
native pointed straight at myself. I could see noth- 
ing, but he approached, and pointing close to a wisp 
of hay which had fallen upon my coat, repeated " Chi- 
rombo ! " Believing that it must be some insect 
among the hay, I took it in my fingers, looked over 
it, and told him pointedly there was no " Chirombo " 



100 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

there. He smiled, and pointing again to the hay, ex- 
claimed " Moio ! "— " It's alive ! " The hay itself was 
the Chirombo. I do not exaggerate when I say that 
that wisp of hay was no more like an insect than my 
aneroid barometer. I had mentally resolved never to 
be taken in by any of these mimetic frauds ; I was 
incredulous enough to suspect that the descriptions 
of Wallace and the others were somewhat highly col- 
ored ; but I confess to have been completely stulti- 
fied and beaten by the very first mimetic form I met. 
It was one of that very remarkable family the Phas- 
midce, but surely nowhere else in nature could there 
be such another creature. Take two inches of dried 
yellow grass-stalk, such as one might pluck to run 
through the stem of a pipe ; then take six other pieces 
nearly as long and a quarter as thick ; bend each in the 
middle at any angle you like, stick them in three op- 
posite pairs, and again at any angle you like, upon 
the first grass stalk, and you have my Chirombo. 
When you catch him, his limbs are twisted about at 
every angle, as if the whole were made of one long 
stalk of the most delicate grass, hinged in a dozen 
places, and then gently crushed up into a dishevelled 
heap. Having once assumed a position, by a wonder- 
ful instinct he never moves or varies one of his many 
angles by half a degree. The way this insect keeps 
up the delusion is indeed almost as wonderful as the 
mimicry itself ; you may turn him about and over 
and over, but he is mere dried grass, and nothing will 
induce him to acknowledge the animal kingdom by 
the faintest suspicion of spontaneous movement. All 
the members of this family have this power of sham- 
ming death ; but how such emaciated and juiceless 
skeletons should ever presume to be alive is the real 
nvystery. These Phasmidas look more like ghosts 
than living creatures, and so slim are they that, in 
trying to kill them for the collecting-box, the strongest 
squeeze between finger and thumb makes no more 
impression upon them than it would upon fine steel 



MIMICRY. 101 

wire, and one has to half-guillotine them against some 
hard substance before any little life they have is 
sacrificed to science. 

I examined after this many thousands of Phasmidse, 
Mantidse, and other mimetic forms, and there is cer- 
tainly in nature no more curious or interesting study. 
These grass-stalk insects live exclusively among the 
long grass which occurs in patches all over the forests, 
and often reaches a height of eight or ten feet. 
During three -fourths of the year it is dried by the 
sun into a straw-yellow color, and all the insects are 
painted to match. Although yellow is the ground 
tone of these grasses, they are variegated, and 
especially towards the latter half of the year, in two 
ways. They are either tinged here and there with 
red and brown, like the autumn colors at home, or 
they are streaked and spotted with black mould or 
other markings, painted by the ringer of decay. All 
these appearances are closely imitated by insects. To 
complete the deception, some have the antennae 
developed to represent blades of grass, which are 
often from one to two inches in length, and stick out 
from the end of the body, one on either side, like 
blades of grass at the end of a stalk. The favorite 
attitude of these insects is to clasp a grass-stalk, as if 
they were climbing a pole ; then the body is com- 
pressed against the stem and held in position by the 
two fore-limbs, which are extended in front so as to 
form one long line with the body, and so mixed up 
with the stalk as to be practically part of it. The 
four other legs stand out anyhow in rigid spikes, like 
forks from the grass, while the antennae are erected 
at the top, like blades coming off from a node, which 
the button-like head so well resembles. When one of 
these insects springs to a new stalk of grass it will at 
once all but vanish before your eyes. It remains there 
perfectly rigid, a component part of the grass itself, 
its long legs crooked and branched exactly like dried 
hay, the same in color, the same in fineness, and quite 



102 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

defying detection. These blades, alike with limbs 
and body, are variously colored according to season 
and habitat. When the grasses are tinged with 
autumn tints they are the same ; and the colors run 
through many shades, from the pure bright red, such 
as tips the fins of a perch, to the deeper claret colors 
or the tawny gold of port. But an even more 
singular fact remains to be noted. After the rainy 
season, when the new grasses spring up with their 
vivid color, these withered-grass insects seem all to 
disappear. Their color now would be no protection 
to them, and their places are taken by others colored 
as green as the new grass. Whether these are new 
insects or only the same in spring toilets I do not 
know; but I should think they are a different 
population altogether, the cycle of the former 
generation being, probably, complete with the end 
of summer. 

Besides the insects which imitate grass, another 
large class imitate twigs, sticks, and the smaller 
branches of shrubs. The commonest of these is a 
walking twig, three or four inches long, covered with 
bark apparently, and spotted all over with mould 
like the genuine branch. The imitation of bark here 
is one of the most perfect delusions in nature ; the 
delicate striation and the mould spots are reproduced 
exactly, while the segmentation of the body repre- 
sents node-intervals with wonderful accuracy. On 
finding one of these insects I have often cut a small 
branch from an adjoining tree and laid the two side 
by side for comparison ; and when both are partly 
concealed by the hands so as to show only the part 
of the insect's body which is free from limbs, it is 
impossible to tell the one from the other. The very 
joints of the legs in these forms are knobbed to 
represent nodes, and the characteristic attitudes of 
the insect are all such as to sustain the deception. 

A still more elaborate set of forms are those which 
represent leaves. These belong mostly to the Mantis 



MIMICRY. 103 

and Locust tribes, and they are found in all forms, 
sizes, and colors, mimicking foliage at every stage of 
growth, maturity and decay. Some have the leaf 
stamped on their broadened wing-cases in vivid green, 
with veins and midrib complete, and with curious 
expansions over the thorax and along all the limbs 
to imitate smaller leaves. I have again and again 
matched these forms in the forest, not only with the 
living leaf, but with crumpled, discolored, and shriv- 
elled specimens, and indeed the imitations of the 
crumpled autumn-leaf are even more numerous and 
impressive than those of the living form. Lichens, 
mosses, and fungi are also constantly taken as models 
by insects, and there is probably nothing in the vegetal 
kingdom, no knot, wart, nut, mould, scale, bract, 
thorn, or bark, which has not its living counterpart 
in some animal form. Most of the moths, beetles, 
weevils, and especially the larval forms, are more or 
less protected mimetically ; and in fact almost the 
entire population of the tropics is guilty of person- 
ation in ways known or unknown. The lichen- 
mimicking insects even go the length of imitating 
holes, by means of mirror-like pools of black irregularly 
disposed on the back, or interrupting the otherwise 
dangerous symmetry of the fringed sides. The 
philosophy of these coal-black markings greatly puzzled 
me for a time. The first I saw was on a specimen of 
the singular and rare Harpax ocellaria, which had 
been thrown on the camp fire clinging to a lichen- 
covered log, and so well carried out was the illusion 
that even the natives were deceived till the culprit 
betrayed its quality by erecting its gauzy wings. 

But it would be tedious to recount further the 
divisive ways of these arch-deceivers, and I shall 
only refer to another mimetic form, which for cool 
Pharisaism takes the palm from every creeping or 
flying thing. I first saw this menteur a triple Stage 
on the Tanganyika plateau. I had lain for a whole 
week without stirring from one spot — a boulder in 



104 TROPICAL AFRICA. 



the dned-up bed of a stream, for this is the only 
way to find out what really goes on in nature. A 
canopy of leaves arched overhead, the home of many 
birds, and the granite boulders of the dry stream- 
bed, and all along the banks, were marked with their 
white droppings. One day I was startled to see one 
oi these droppings move. It was a mere white 
splash upon the stone, and when I approached I saw 
J must be mistaken ; the thing was impossible ; and 
now it was perfectly motionless. But I certainly 
saw it move, so I bent down and touched it. It was 
an animal. Of course it was as dead as a stone the 
moment I touched it, but one soon knows these 
impostures, and I gave it a minute or two to become 

i e iT haStlly sketcllin g it meantime in case it 
should vanish through the stone, for in that land of 
wonders one really never knows what will happen 
next. Here was a bird-dropping suddenly become 
alive and moving over a rock ; and now it was a 
bird-dropping again ; and yet, like Galileo, I protest 
that it moved. It would not come to, and I almost 
feared I might be mistaken after all, so I turned it 
over on its other side. Now should any sceptic 
persist that this was a bird-dropping I leave him to 
account for a bird-dropping with six legs, a head, 
and a segmented body. Righting the creature, 
which showed no sign of life through all this ordeal, 
I withdrew a few paces and watched developments. 
It lay motionless on the stone, no legs, no head, no 
feelers, nothing to be seen but a flat patch of white 
—just such a patch as you could make on the stone 
in a second with a piece of chalk. Presently it 
stirred, and the spot slowly sidled across the boulder 
until I caught the impostor and imprisoned him for 
my cabinet. I saw in all about a dozen of these 
insects after this. They are about half the size of a 
iourpenny-piece, slightly more oval than round, and 
as white as a snowflake. This whiteness is due to a 
number of little tufts of delicate down growing out 



MIMICRY. 105 

from minute protuberances all over the back. It is 
a fringe of similar tufts round the side that gives the 
irregular margin so suggestive of a splash ; and the 
under surface of the body has no protection at all. 
The limbs are mere threads, and the motion of the 
insect is slow and monotonous, with frequent pauses 
to impress surrounding nature with its moribund 
condition. Now, unless this insect with this color and 
habit were protectively colored it simply would not 
have a chance to exist. It lies fearlessly exposed on 
the bare stones during the brightest hours of the 
tropical day, a time when almost every other animal 
is skulking out of sight. Lying upon all the stones 
round about are the genuine droppings of birds ; and 
when one sees the two together it is difficult to say 
whether one is most struck with the originality of 
the idea, or the extraordinary audacity with which 
the role is carried out.* 

It will be apparent from these brief notes that 
mimicry is not merely an occasional or exceptional 
phenomenon, but an integral part of the economy of 
nature. It is not a chance relation between a few 
objects, but a system so widely authorized that prob- 
ably the whole animal kingdom is more or less 
involved in it; a system, moreover, which, in the 
hands of natural selection, must ever increase in 
intricacy and beauty. It may also be taken for 
granted that a scheme so widespread and so success- 
ful is based upon some sound utilitarian principle. 
That principle, I should say, was probably its economy. 
Nature does everything as simply as possible, and 
with the least expenditure of material. Now con- 
sider the enormous saving of muscle and nerve, of 
instinct and energy, secured by making an animal's 

* It is a considerable responsibility to be the sole witness to this 
comedy — though I saw it repeated a dozen times subsequently — 
but, fortunately for my veracity, I have since learned from Mr. 
Kirby of the British Museum that there is an English beetle, the 
Cionus Blattarla, the larval form of which "operates" in a pre- 
cisely similar way. 



106 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

lease of life to depend on passivity rather than 
activity. Instead of having to run away, the crea- 
ture has simply to keep still ; instead of having to 
fight, it has but to hide. No armor is needed, no 
powerful muscle, no expanse of wing. A few daubs 
of color, a little modelling of thorax and abdomen, 
a deft turn of antennae and limb, and the thing is 
done. 

At the first revelation of all these smart hypocrisies 
one is inclined to brand the whole system as cowardly 
and false. And, however much the creatines impress 
you by their cleverness, you never quite get over the 
feeling that there is something underhand about it; 
something questionable and morally unsound. The 
evolutionist, also, is apt to charge mimetic species in 
general with neglecting the harmonious development 
of their physical framework, and by a cheap and 
ignoble subterfuge evading the appointed struggle 
for life. But is it so? Are the aesthetic elements in 
nature so far below the mechanical? Are color and 
form, quietness and rest, so much less important than 
the specialization of single function or excellence in 
the arts of war ? Is it nothing that, while in some 
animals the disguises tend to become more and more 
perfect, the faculties for penetrating them, in other 
animals, must continually increase in subtlety and 
power ? And, after all, if the least must be said, is 
it not better to be a live dog than a dead lion ? 



VIII. 

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH. 

From the work of the various explorers who have 
penetrated Africa, it is now certain that the interior 
of that Continent is occupied by a vast plateau from 
4000 to 5000 feet above the level of the sea. In five 



A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH. 107 

separate regions— in the North-east, in Abyssinia, 
in the Masai country, on the Tanganyika plateau, 
and in the district inland from Benguela— this plat- 
eau attains a height of considerably over 5000 leet; 
while towards the coast, throughout their entire 
length, both east and west, it falls with great uniform- 
ity to a lower plateau, with an elevation of from 
1000 to 2000 feet. This lower plateau is succeeded, 
t also with much uniformity along both coast lines, by 
littoral and deltoid plains, with an average breadth 
from the sea of about 150 miles. 

The section which I am about to describe, enter- 
ing Africa at the Zambesi and penetrating inwards 
to the Tanganyika plateau, traverses each of these 
regions in turn— the coast-belt, the lower fringing 
table-land, the great general plateau of the country, 
and the third or highest elevation of the Tanganyika 
table-land. To deal thoroughly with so vast a re- 
gion in the course of a single exploration is out ot 
the question ; and I only indicate here a few of the 
rough results of what was no more than a brief and 
hasty reconnaissance. 

The first and only geological feature to break the 
monotony of mangrove-swamp and low grass plain 
of the coast-belt is the debris of an ancient coral-reef, 
studded with sponges and other organisms. Tins 
reef is exposed on the Qua-qua River, a little above 
Mogurrumba, and about fifty miles from the sea. It 
is of small extent, at no great height above the pres- 
ent sea-level, and, taken alone, can only argue for a 
very inconsiderable elevation of the coast region. 
Some twenty miles farther inland, and still only a 
few yards above sea-level, an inconspicuous elevation 
appears, consisting of sedimentary rocks. This belt 
is traceable for some distance, both north and south, 
and a poor section may be found in the Zambesi 
River, a few miles above the grave of Mrs. Living- 
stone at Shupanga. The rocks in question, which 
are only visible when the Zambesi is very low, con- 



108 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

sist of a few thin beds of reel and yellow sandstones, 
with intercalated marly sandstones and fine conglom- 
erates. Sedimentary rocks, in somewhat similar 
relation, are found at least as far north as Mombassa, 
above Zanzibar, and as far south as the Cape ; and it 
seems probable that the whole of the plateau of the 
interior is fringed by this narrow belt. No organic 
remains have been found in this series north of Natal, 
but the fossils of the Cape beds may shed some light 
on its horizon. Associated probably with these rocks 
are the great beds of coal which are known to exist 
some distance up the river in the neighborhood of 
Tette. 

A short distance above the junction of the River 
Shire with the Zambesi the first hills of the plateau 
begin almost abruptly. They occur in irregular 
isolated masses, mostly of the saddle-back order, and 
varying in height from 100 or 200 to 2000 feet. 
Those I examined consisted entirely of a very white 
quart zite — the only quartzite, I may say, I ever saw 
in East Central Africa. At the foot of the most 
prominent of those hills — that of Morumballa — a 
hot-spring bubbles up, which Livingstone has already 
described in his " Zambesi." Hot-springs are not 
uncommon in other parts of the Continent, and sev- 
eral are to be found on the shores of Lake Nyassa. 
These are all of the simplest type, and although the 
temperature is high they leave no deposit anywhere 
to indicate their chemical character. 

Two or three days' journey north and west of Mo- 
rumballa, among the distant hills which border the 
valley of the Shire, Livingstone marks a spot in his 
sketch-map where coal is to be found. After exam- 
ining the neighborhood with some care, and cross- 
examining the native tribes, I conclude that Living- 
stone must, in this instance, have been either mis- 
taken or misinformed. A black rock certainly occurs 
at the locality named, but after securing specimens 
of this as well as of all the dark-colored rocks in the 



A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH. 109 

vicinity, I found them to be, without exception, 
members of the igneous class. One very dark diorite 
was probably the rock which, on a distant view, had 
been mistaken for coal, for none of the natives along 
the whole length of the lower Shire had ever heard 
of " a black rock which burned." Coal, however, as 
already mentioned, does certainly occur farther in- 
land on the Zambesi ; while, farther south, the Natal 
and Transvaal coalfields are now well known. 

While speaking of coal I may besD refer here to a 
small coal-bed associated Avith an apparently differ- 
ent series of rocks, and of special interest from its 
occurrence in the far interior of the country. On 
the western shore of Lake Nyassa, about 10° south 
latitude, coal was reported a few years ago by a 
solitary explorer, who penetrated that region pros- 
pecting for gold in the wake of Livingstone. The 
importance of such a discovery — a coal-seam on the 
borders of one of the great inland seas of Africa — ■ 
cannot be over-estimated ; and the late Mr. James 
Stewart, C.E., who has done such important work .for 
the orography of Africa, made a special examination 
of the spot. From his report to the Royal Geogra- 
phical Society I extract the following reference :— 

" On the 29th we marched northwards along the 
coast, reaching, after three miles, the stream in which 
is the coal discovered by Mr. Rhodes. The coal lies 
in a clay bank, tilted up at an angle of 45°, dip west. 
It is laid bare over only some 30 feet, and is about 
7 feet thick. It hardly looks as if it were in its orig- 
inal bed. The coal is broken and thrown about as 
if it had been brought down by a landslip, and traces 
of clay are found in the interstices. Yet the bed is 
compact, and full of good coal. I traced it along the 
hillside for some 200 yards, and found it cropping 
out on the surface here and there. It is 500 feet 
above the lake-level, and about a mile and a half from 
the shore. I lit a good fire with it, which burned up 
strongly. The coal softened and threw out gas bub- 



110 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

bles, but gave no gas-jets. It caked slightly, but not 
so as to impede its burning." — Proceedings, vol. iii. 
No. 5, p. 264. 

I examined this section pretty carefully, and fear 
I must differ slightly from Mr. Stewart in his geo- 
logical and economical view of the formation. The 
7-foot seam described by Stewart is certainly a decep- 
tion, the seam being really composed of a series of 
thin beds of alternately carbonaceous and argillaceous 
matter, few of the layers of coal being more than an 
inch in thickness. With some of the most carefully 
selected specimens I lit a fire, but with disappointing 
results. Combustion was slow, and without flame. 
Although there were what can only be called films of 
really good coal here and there, the mineral, on the 
whole, seemed of inferior quality, and useless as a 
steam-coal. From the general indications of the 
locality I should judge that the coal existed only in 
limited quantity, while the position of the bed at the 
top of a rocky gorge renders the deposit all but inac- 
cessible. On the whole, therefore, the Lake Nyassa 
coal, so far as opened up at present, can scarcely be 
regarded as having any great economical importance, 
although the geological interest of such a mineral in 
this region is considerable. Sections of the coal have 
already been prepared for the microscope, and Dr. 
Carruthers of the British Museum has identified the 
macrospores of L} 7 copodaceous plants, which are 
identical with similar organisms found in the coal- 
fields of England. 

The Geology of the great African plateaux, so far 
as my section from the Lower Shire to the Tangan- 
yika plateau is any indication of their general struct- 
ure, is of such simplicity that it may almost be dis- 
missed in a sentence. The whole country from the 
Shire* river, a hundred miles above its junction with 
the Zambesi, embracing the lower and higher central 
plateaux, the whole Shire Highlands from the river 
to the westward shores of Lake Shirwa, the three 



A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH. Ill 

hundred miles of rocky coast fringing the western 
shore of Lake Nyassa, the plateau between Nyassa 
and Tanganyika for at least half its length — with 
one unimportant interruption — consists solely of gran- 
ite and gneiss. The character and texture of this 
rock persist with remarkable uniformity throughout 
this immense region. The granite, an ordinary gray 
granite, composed of white rarely pink orthoclase 
felspar, the mica of the biotitic or magnesian variety, 
rarely muscovite, and neither fine nor coarse in text- 
ure; the gneiss, the same rock foliated. Of the rela- 
tion of these gneissose and granitic rocks to one 
another I was unable to discover any law. Sometimes 
the gneiss would persist over a large area, sometimes 
the granite; while frequently the two would alternate 
perplex ingly within a limited area. Mr. Joseph 
Thomson's section, drawn inland from Zanzibar and 
joining mine at the northern end of Lake Nyassa, and 
thence onwards by a more easterly route towards 
Tanganyika, reveals a somewhat similar petrograph- 
ical structure; and, from scattered references in 
the journals of other explorers, it is plain that this 
gneisso-granitic formation occupies a very large area 
in the interior of the African Continent. Associated 
minerals with these rocks, as far as a very general 
survey indicated, were all but wholly wanting. At 
Zomba, on the Shire' Highlands, a little tourmaline 
occurs, but of the precious metals I could find no 
trace. Veins of any kind are also rare; and even 
pegmatite I encountered in only one instance. In- 
trusive dykes throughout the whole area were like- 
wise absent except in a single district. This district 
lies towards the southern border of the Shire' High- 
lands, immediately where the plateau rises from the 
river, and there the dykes occur pretty numerously. 
They are seldom more than a few feet in breadth, 
and consist of ordinary dolerite or basalt. The black 
rock on the Lower Shire, already mentioned in con- 
nection with Livingstone's supposed discovery of coal, 



112 TUG PICA L A FEW A. 

may possibly be one of these dykes ; but that there 
is any considerable development of igneous rocks in 
this immediate locality I should doubt. Farther up 
the Zambesi, however, coulees of basalt are met with 
at more than one place, conspicuously in the neigh- 
borhood of the Victoria Falls. The only distinct 
trace of volcanic action throughout my route appeared 
towards the extreme northern end of Lake Nyassa. 
One is warned beforehand by occasional specimens 
of pumice lying about the lake shore as one travels 
north; but it is not till the extreme end of the lake 
is reached that the source is discovered in the series 
of low volcanic cones which Thomson has already 
described in this locality. The development is ap- 
parently local, and the origin of the cones probably 
comparatively recent. 

Apart from this local development of igneous rocks 
at the north end of Lake Nyassa, the only other 
break in the granitic series throughout the area trav- 
ersed by my line of march occurs near the native 
village of Karonga, on Lake Nyassa. About a dozen 
miles from the north-western lake shore on the route 
to Tanganyika, after following the Rukuru river 
through a defile of granite rocks, I came, to my great 
surprise, upon a well-marked series of stratified beds. 
At a bend in the river a fine section is exposed. 
They lie throw against the granitic rocks, which 
here show signs of disturbance, and consist of thin 
beds of very fine light-gray sandstone, and blue and 
gray shales, with an occasional band of gray lime- 
stone. By camping at the spot for some days, and 
working patiently, I was rewarded with the discovery 
of fossils. This is, of course, the main interest of 
these beds, — for these are, I believe, the only fossils 
that have ever been found in Central Africa. The 
shale, naturally, yielded the most productive re- 
sults, one layer especially being one mass of small 
Laynellibranchiata. Though so numerous, these fossils 
are confined to a single species of the Tellinidae, a 



A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH. 113 

family abundantly represented in tropical seas at the 
present time, and dating back as far as the Oolite. 
Vegetable remains are feebly represented by a few 
reeds and grasses. Fish-scales abound ; but I was 
only able, and that after much labor, to unearth two 
two or three imperfect specimens of the fishes them- 
selves. These have been put into the accomplished 
hands of Dr. Traquair of Edinburgh, who has been 
kind enough to furnish the following account of 
them : — 

Edinburgh, 2od April, 18S8. 

Dear Professor Drum mono— I have carefully examined the 
six specimens of fossil fish-remains from Central Africa, which 
you submitted to me, and though I certainly would have wished 
them to have heen less fragmentary, I shall do my best to give 
an opinion upon them. 

No. i, the largest, is the hinder portion of a fish of moderate 
size showing not onlv scales, but also the remains of the dorsal, 
anal, and caudal fins. The caudal is strongly heterocercal. and 
was probably deeplv bifurcated, but, the rays of the lower lobe are 
very badly preserved : onlv the posterior parts of the dorsal and 
anal are seen, nearly opposite each other, and composed of fine 
closely placed, and closely articulated rays. The scales, displaced 
and iumbled up. are osseous, thick, and rhomboidal, with a strong 
blunt carina on the attached surface, while the exposed part of 
the external surface is covered with ganoine, and ornamented 
with rather sparselv scattered pits and punctures. 

BHongin^ to the Order Ganoidei, this fish is with equal certain- 
ty referable^ the family Palseoniscidte, but its genus is more a 
matter of doubt owin^to the fragmentary nature of the specimen. 
Judo-in" from the form and thickness of the scales, I should be in- 
clined to refer it to Acroleins, were it not, that the dorsal and anal 
fins seem so close to the tail, and so nearly opposite each other ; 
here however, it may be remarked that the disturbed state of the 
scales affords room for the possibility that the original relations of 
the parts may not be perfectly preserved. I have, however, no 
doubt that, as a species, it is new; and as you have been the first 
to bring fossil fishes from those regions of Central Africa, you 
will perhaps allow me to name it Acroleins (?) DrummonOi. 

No. 2 is a piece of cream-colored limestone, with numerous 
minute, scattered, rhombic, striated, ganoid scales, which I can- 
not venture to name, though I believe them to be palreoniscid. As- 
sociated with these is a small portion of the margin of a jaw, with 
numerous minute sharp conical teeth. But also lying among 
these minuter relics is a scale of a much larger size, and clcar.y 
belono-in" to another fish. It measures 1-4 inch in height by the 
same in breadth; its shape is rhomboidal, having an extensive an- 
terior covered area, and a strong articular spine projecting from 



114 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

the upper margin. The free surface is brilliantly ganoid, and 
marked with furrows separating feeble ridges, which pass rather 
obliquely downwards and backwards across the scale, and terminate 
in eight sharp denticnlations of the hinder margin. A little way 
off is the impression of the attached surface of a similar scale, and 
there are also two interspinous bones, probably belomnno- to the 
same fish. 

This is probably also a palaeoniscid scale, resembling in shape 
those of Acrolepis, but it is rather thinner than is usually the case 
in this genus. It has also considerable resemblance to some of 
those scales from the European Trias, named by Agassiz Gyrolepis. 
Though it may be rather venturesome to name a species from such 
slender material, nevertheless we may, provisionally at least, rec- 
ognize the scale as Acrolepis (?) Africanus. 

Nos. 3 and 4 are small pieces of the same limestone, covered 
with the minute striated palseoniscid scales referred to above. 

No. 5 is a piece of gray micaceous shale, with scales of yet a 
fourth species of paheoniscid fish. One conspicuous scale unfor- 
tunately, like all the rest, seen only from the attached surface, is 
1-4 inch in height by nearly 1-6 in breadth; it is tolerably rectangu- 
lar in shape, having a well-developed articular spine and fossette. 
Part of the scale is broken away at the anterior margin, the im- 
pression brought into view showing that the covered area is nar- 
row, and indicating that the free surface is striated with rather 
sharp ridges passing obliquely across the scale. The posterior 
margin is finely denticulated. 

Though this scale is in my opinion specifically, and possibly 
generically, distinct from those previously named, the outer sur- 
face not being properly displayed renders it impossible to give a 
sufficient diagnosis. 

No. 6 is a piece of the same shale, having the clavicle of a small 
palaeoniscid fish, which it is, however, impossible to name. — lam, 
yours faithfully, 

R H. Tkaquair. 

These fossiliferous beds seem to occupy a com- 
paratively limited area, and have a very high dio in 
a south-easterly direction. At the spot where 'my 
observations were taken they did not extend over 
more than half a mile of country, but it is possible 
that the formation may persist for a long distance in 
other directions. Indeed, I traced it for some miles 
in the direction in which, some fifty or sixty miles 
off, lay the coal already described, and to which it 
may possibly be related. 

With one or two general remarks upon surface 
geology and physical geography I bring this note to 
a close. First, regarding the Lakes Nyassa and 



A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH. 1 1 5 

Shirwa, — there is distinct evidence, and especially in 
the case of the latter, that they have formerly oc- 
cupied a considerably larger area than at present. 
Shirwa is an extremely shallow lake ; though the 
eastern and southern shores are mountainous, it is 
suggestive rather of an immense bog than of a deep 
inland sea. For many miles before reaching the 
shore there are signs that one is traversing the site 
of a former and larger Shirwa, which may possibly 
at one time have been actually connected with the 
lower extremity of Lake Nyassa. To substantiate 
this conclusion, however, will require more detailed 
examination of the Shire Highlands than I was able 
to give. The peculiarity of Shirwa is that the water 
is brackish to the taste, while that of Nyassa and 
of the other Central African lakes, with the excep- 
tion of Lake Leopold, is fresh. The shallowness 
of Shirwa, and theprecariousnessof its outlet through 
Lake Cheuta to the Lujenda, amply account for this 
difference ; for the narrow waters of Nyassa and 
Tanganyika are thoroughly drained and profoundly 
deep. 

That Lake Nyassa is also slowly drying up is 
evident from the most superficial examination of its 
southern end. There it has already left behind a 
smaller lake — Lake Pomalombe — a considerable ex- 
panse of water, through which the Shire passes a few 
miles after emerging from Lake Nyassa, but already 
so shallow that nowhere in the dry season does the 
depth exceed three fathoms. If the silting up of this 
lake continues for a few years it will render this 
sheet of water, which commands the entrance to Lake 
Nyassa, totally unnavigable, and thus close the mag- 
nificent water-highway at present open, with a port- 
age of seventy miles, from the top of Lake Nyassa 
to the Indian Ocean at the mouth of the Zambesi. 

Regarding the interesting question of the origin 
of Lake Nyassa and its great sister-lakes in the 
heart of Africa — the Victoria and Albert Nyanza 



116 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

and Tanganyika — I do not presume to speak. No 
follower of Ramsay in his theory of the glacial origin 
of lakes could desire a more perfect example of a 
rock-basin than that of Lake Nyassa. It is a gigantic 
trough of granite and gneiss, three hundred miles in 
length, nowhere over fifty miles in breadth, and 
sixteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, 
the mountains rising all around it, and sometimes 
almost sheer above it, to a farther height of one, 
two, and three thousand feet. The high Tangan- 
yika plateau borders it on the northern shore, and 
the greatest depth is precisely where the glacial 
theory would demand, namely, towards the upper 
portion of the lake. On the other hand, the physical 
geology of the country in which these other lakes 
are situated, as well as several features connected 
with Lake Nyassa itself, lend no countenance to such 
a view ; and probably the suggestion of Murchison 
and other geologists is correct, that all these lakes, 
colossal though they still are, are the remnants of a 
much vaster expanse of water which once stretched 
over Central Africa. 

The only other point to which I need allude is the 
subject of glaciation itself. And I refer to this 
pointedly, because I have lately encountered allu- 
sions, and in quarters entitling them to respect, to 
the presence of glacial phenomena in the Central 
Lake district of Africa. I confess that my obser- 
vations have failed to confirm these suggestions. It 
has been my lot to have had perhaps exceptional 
opportunities of studying the phenomena of glacia- 
tion in Europe and Northern America, and I have 
been unable to detect anywhere in the interior of 
Africa a solitary indication of glacial action. In 
Kaffirland, far to the south, there are features which 
one would almost unhesitatingly refer to glaciation ; 
but in East Central Africa not a vestige of boulder- 
clay, nor moraine matter, nor striae, nor glaciated 
surface, nor outline, is anywhere traceable. One 



A POLITICAL WARNING. 117 

would be curious to know to what extent the flora 
and fauna of the inland plateau confirm or contra- 
dict this negative evidence against the glaciation of 
this region. 

Finally, the thing about the geology of Africa 
that strikes one as especially significant is that 
throughout this vast area, just opening up to science, 
there is nothing new — no unknown force at work ; 
no rock strange to the petrographer ; no pause in 
denudation ; no formation, texture, or structure to 
pnt the law of continuity to confusion. Rapid radia- 
tion, certainly, replaces the effects of frost in northern 
lands — and the enormous denudation due to this 
cause is a most striking feature of tropical geology. 
The labors of the worm, again, in transporting soil 
in temperate climates are undertaken by the termite; 
but here, as elsewhere, every fresh investigation 
tends to establish more and more the oneness and 
simplicity of Nature. 



IX. 

A POLITICAL WARNING. 

When I reached the coast to embark for England 
after my wanderings in the interior, the Portuguese 
authorities at Quilimane presented me with various 
official documents, which I was told I must ac- 
knowledge with signatures and money before being 
permitted to leave Africa. Having already had to 
pay certain moneys to Portugal to get into this 
country, it was a shock to find that I had also to 
pay to get out ; but, as no tax could be considered 
excessive that would facilitate one's leaving even 
the least of the Portuguese East African colonies, I 
cheerfully counted out the price of my release. Be- 
fore completing the conveyance, however, my eye 



118 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

fell on six words prominently endorsed on one of 
the documents, which instantly tightened my purse- 
strings. The words were, " Tax for residing in 
the Interior " — so much. Now a day or tAvo spent 
in waiting for a steamer could scarcely be construed 
into residence, nor could a strip of coast-line with 
propriety be termed the interior, so I ventured to point 
out the irrelevancy to the Portuguese official. Waiv- 
ing the merely philological question of residence, he 
went at once to the root of the matter by informing 
me that the Portuguese definition of the word In- 
terior differed materially from that of England. The 
Interior, he said, comprised the whole of Africa inland 
from the coast-province of Mozambique, and included, 
among other and larger possessions, the trifling ter- 
ritories of the Upper Shire Highlands, Lake Shirwa, 
and Lake Nyassa. These last, he assured me, be- 
longed to Portugal, and it became me, having therein 
shared the protection of that ancient flag, to ac- 
knowledge the obligation to the extent of so many 
hundred Reis. 

Though not unprepared for this assumption, the 
idea of enforcing it by demanding tribute was so 
great a novelty that, before discharging my supposed 
liabilities, I humbly asked information on the follow- 
ing points : — 1. Did the region described really belong 
to Portugal ? 2. When and where was this claim 
recognized by England directl}' or indirectly ? 3. 
Where in the Interior, as thus defined, was the Port- 
uguese flag to be found? And 4. What protection 
had it ever given to me or to any other European? 
The replies to these queries being evasive, I took it 
upon myself to correct the history, the geography, 
and the politics of the throng of Government officials 
who now joined the sederunt by the following state- 
ment of facts: — 1. The region described did not 
belong to Portugal. 2. Its sovereignty had never 
been in any way acknowledged by England. 3. The 
Portuguese flag was nowhere to be found there, and 



A POLITICAL WARNING. 111) 

never had been there. 4. Not one solitary Port- 
uguese up to that time had ever even set foot in the 
country — except one man who was brought in for a 
few weeks under English auspices ; so that no pro- 
tection had ever been given, or could possibly be 
given, to me or to any one else. These statements 
were received in silence, and after much running to 
and fro among the officials the representative of John 
Bull, instead of being dragged to prison, and his rifle 
— his only real escort through Nyassa-land — poinded 
to pay for his imaginary protection, found himself 
bowed off the premises with a discharge in full of his 
debt to Portugal, and the unpaid tax-paper still in 
his pocket. 

I recall this incident to introduce in all seriousness 
the question interesting so many at the present 
moment as to the title-deeds of Equatorial Africa. 
Why Africa should not belong to the Africans I have 
never quite been able to see, but since this Continent 
is being rapidly partitioned out among the various 
European States, it is well, even in the African inter- 
est, to inquire into the nature and validity of these 
claims. The two political maps which will be found 
at the end of this volume will enable those interested 
to see the present situation at a glance, and I shall 
only further emphasize one or two points of imme- 
diate practical importance. 

The connection of Portugal with Africa is an old, 
and — at least it was at first — an honorable one. The 
voyages of the Portuguese were the first to enrich 
geography with a knowledge of the African coasts, 
and so early as 1497 they took possession of the 
eastern shore by founding the colony of Mozambique. 
This rule, however, though nominally extending 
from Delagoa Bay to as far north as Cape Delgado, 
was confined to two or three isolated points, and 
nowhere, except on the Zambesi, affected more than 
the mere fringe of land bordering the Indian Ocean. 
On the Zambesi the Portuguese established stations 



320 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

at Senna, Tette, and Zumbo, which were used, 
though on the most limited scale, as missionary and 
trading centres; but these are at present all but 
abandoned and in the last stages of decrepitude. 
The right of Portugal to the lower regions of the 
Zambesi, notwithstanding its entire failure to colo- 
nize in and govern the country, can never be dis- 
puted by any European Power, though the Lan- 
deens, or Zulus, who occupy the southern bank, not 
only refuse to acknowledge the claim, but exact an 
annual tribute from the Portuguese for their occupa- 
tion of the district. 

No one has ever attempted to define how far 
inland the Portuguese claim, founded on coast-pos- 
session, is to be considered good; but that it cannot 
include the regions north of the Zambesi— the Shire 
Highlands and Lake Nyassa — is self-evident. These 
regions were discovered and explored by Livingstone. 
They have been occupied since his time exclusively 
by British subjects, and colonized exclusively with 
British capital. The claim of England, therefore — 
though nothing but a moral claim has ever been 
made — is founded on the double right of discovery 
and occupation ; and if it were a question of treaty 
with the natives, it might possibly be found on pri- 
vate inquiry that a precaution so obvious had not 
been forgotten by those most nearly interested. On 
the other hand, no treaties exist with Portugal ; there 
is not a single Portuguese in the country, and until 
the other day no Portuguese had even seen it. The 
Portuguese boundary-line has always stopped at the 
confluence with the Shire of the river Ruo, and the 
political barrier erected there by Chipitula and the 
river Chiefs has been maintained so rigidly that no 
subject of Portugal was ever allowed to pass it from 
the south. Instead, therefore, of possessing the 
Shire Highlands, that is the region of all others 
from which the Portuguese have been most carefully 
excluded. 



A POLITICAL WARNING. 121 

The reason for this enforced exclusion is not far 
to seek. At first the Portuguese had too much to 
do in keeping their always precarious foothold on 
the banks of the Zambesi to think of the country 
that lay beyond ; and when their eyes were at last 
turned towards it by the successes of the English, 
the detestation in which they were by this time held 
by the natives — the inevitable result of long years of 
tyranny and mismanagement — made it impossible 
for them to extend an influence which was known to 
be disastrous to every native right. Had the Portu- 
guese done well by the piece of Africa of which they 
already assumed the stewardship, no one now would 
dispute their claim to as much of the country as 
they could wisely use. But when even the natives 
have had to rise and by force of arms prevent their 
expansion, it is impossible that the}' should be 
allowed to overflow into the Highland country — 
much less to claim it — now that England, by pacific 
colonization and missionary work, holds the key to 
the hearts and hands of its peoples. By every moral 
consideration the Portuguese have themselves for- 
feited the permission to trespass farther in Equa- 
torial Africa. They have done nothing for the 
people since the day they set foot in it. They have 
never discouraged, but rather connived at, the slave- 
trade ; Livingstone himself took the servant of the 
Governor of Tette red-handed at the head of a large 
slave-gang. They have been at perpetual feud with 
the native tribes. They have taught them to drink. 
Their missions have failed. Their colonization is 
not even a name. With such a record in the past, 
no pressure surely can be required to make the Gov- 
ernment of England stand firm in its repudiation of 
a claim which, were it acknowledged, would destroy 
the last hope for East Central Africa. 

England's stake in this country is immeasurably 
greater than any statistics can represent, but a rough 
estimate of the tangible English interest will show 



122 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

the necessity of the British Government doing its 
utmost at least to conserve what is already there. 

The Established Church of Scotland has three 
ordained missionaries in the Shire Highlands, one 
medical man, a male and a female teacher, a carpenter, 
a gardener, and other European and many native 
agents. The Free Church of Scotland on Lake 
Nyassa has four ordained missionaries — three of whom 
are doctors — several teachers and artizans, and many 
native catechists. The Universities Mission possesses 
a steamer on Lake Nyassa, and several missionary 
agents ; while the African Lakes Company, as already 
mentioned, has steamers both on the Shire and Lake 
Nyassa, with twelve trading stations established at 
intervals throughout the country, and manned by 
twenty-five European agents. All these various 
agencies, and that of the brothers Buchanan at Zomba, 
are well equipped with buildings, implements, roads, 
plantations, and gardens ; and the whole represents 
a capital expenditure of not less than £ 180,000. 
The well-known editor of Livingstone's Journals, the 
Rev. Horace Waller, thus sums up his account of 
these English enterprises in his Title-Deeds to Nyassa- 
Land : " Dotted here and there, from the mangrove 
swamps at the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi to the 
farthest extremity of Lake Nyassa, we pass the graves 
of naval officers, of brave ladies, of a missionary 
bishop, of clergymen, Foreign Office representatives, 
doctors, scientific men, engineers, and mechanics. 
All these were our countrymen : they lie in glorious 
graves; their careers have been foundation-stones, 
and already the edifice rises. British mission stations 
are working at high pressure on the Shire Highlands, 
and under various auspices, not only upon the shores 
of Lake Nyassa, but on its islands also, and, by 
desperate choice as it were, in the towns of the 
devastating hordes who live on the plateaux on 
either side of the lake. Numbers of native Christians 
owe their knowledge of the common faith to these 



A POLITICAL WARNING. 123 

efforts; scores of future chiefs are being instructed 
in the schools, spread over hundreds of miles ; planta- 
tions are being mapped out ; commerce is developing 
by sure and steady steps ; a vigorous company is 
showing to tribes and nations that there are more 
valuable commodities in their land than their sons 
and daughters*" This is the vision which Living- 
stone saw, when, in the last years of his life, he 
pleaded with his fellow-countrymen to follow him 
into Africa. "I have opened the door," he said, U I 
leave it to you io see that no one closes it after me." 
The urgency of the question of Portuguese as 
against British supremacy in Equatorial Africa must 
not blind us, however, to another and scarcely less 
important point — the general European, and espe- 
cially the recent German, invasion of Africa. The 
Germans are good, though impecunious colonists, 
but it cannot be said that they or any of the other 
European nations are as alive to the moral responsi- 
bilities of administration among native tribes as 
England would desire. And though they are all 
freely entitled to whatever lands in Africa they may 
legitimately secure, it is advisable for all concerned 
that these acquisitions should be clearly defined and 
established in international law, in order that the 
various Powers, the various trading-companies, and 
the various missions, may know exactly where they 
stand. The almost hopeless entanglement of the 
Foreign Powers in Africa at present may be seen 
from the following political " section," which repre- 
sents the order of occupation along the Atlantic sea- 
board from opposite Gibraltar to the Cape : — 

POLITICAL "SECTION" OF WESTEPvN AFRICA. 

Spain . . . Morocco. 

France . . " 

Spain . . . Opposite the Canaries. 

France . . French Senegambia. 



124 



TROPICAL AFRICA. 



Britain 

France 

Britain 

Portugal 

France 

Britain 

Liberia 

France 

England 

France 

Unappropriated 

England 

Germany 

French 

Portuguese . 

International 

Portuguese . 

Portuguese . 

Germany 

England 

Germany 

England 



British Senegambia 
French " 

British " 

Portuguese " 

Sierra Leone. 
Republic of Liberia. 
Gold Coast. 
Gold Coast. 

Dahomey. 

a 

Niger. 

Cameroons. 

French Congo. 

Portuguese Congo, 

Congo. 

Angola. 

Benguela. 

Angra Pequena. 

Walvisch Bay. 

Orange River. 

Cape of Good Hope. 



These several possessions on the western coast 
have at least the advantage of being to some extent 
defined, but those on the east, and especially as 
regards their inland limits, are in a complete state 
of chaos. It seems hopeless to propose it, but what 
is really required is an International Conference to 
overhaul title-deeds, adjust boundary-lines, delimit 
territories, mark off states, protectorates, lands held 
by companies, and spheres of influence. England's 
interest in this must be largely a moral one. Her 
ambitions in the matter of new territories are long 
ago satisfied. But there will be certain conflict some 
day if the portioning of Africa is not more closely 
Avatched than it is at present. 

As an example of the complacent way in which 
vast tracts in Africa are being appropriated, glance 
for a moment at the recent inroads of the Germans. 
On the faith of private treaties, and of an agreement 



A POLITICAL WARNING. ±25 

with Portugal, Germany has recently staked off a 
region in East Central Africa stretching from the 
boundaries of the Congo Free State to the Indian 
Ocean, and embracing an area considerably larger 
than the German Empire. To a portion only of this 
region — the boundaries of which, contrasted with 
that arbitrarily claimed in addition, will be apparent 
from a comparison of the maps — have the Germans 
procured a title ; and the steps by which this has been 
attained afford an admirable illustration of modern 
methods of land-transfer in Africa. What happened 
was this: — 

Four or five years ago Dr. Karl Peters concluded 
treaties with the native chiefs of Useguha, Ukami, 
Nguru and Usagara, by which he acquired these 
territories from the Society for German Colonization. 
The late Sultan of Zanzibar attempted to remon- 
strate, but meantime an imperial "Schutzbrief " had 
been secured from Berlin, and a German fleet arrived 
at Zanzibar prepared to enforce it. Britain appealed 
to Germany on the subject, and a Delimitation 
Commission was appointed, which met in London. 
An agreement was come to, signed by Lord Iddes- 
leigh on 29th October, 1886, and duly given effect to. 
The terms of this Anglo-German Convention have 
been recently made public in a well-informed article 
by Mr. A. Silva White (Scottish Geographical Maga- 
zine, March, 1888), to which I am indebted for some 
of the above facts, and the abstract may be given here 
intact, as political knowledge of Africa is not only 
deficient, but materials for improving it are all but 
inaccessible. In view, moreover, of the spirit of ac- 
quisitiveness which is abroad among the nations of 
Europe, and of recent attempts on the part of Germany 
to claim more than her title allows, the exact terms 
of this contract ought to be widely known : — 

I. Both Powers recognize the sovereignty of the Sultan 
of Zanzibar over the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, Lamu 



126 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

and Mafia, as also over those small islands lying within a 
circuit of twelve nautical miles of Zanzibar. Both Powers 
also recognize as the Sultan's possessions on the mainland 
an uninterrupted coast-line from the mouth of the Minin- 
gani River at the entrance of the bay of Tunghi (south of 
Cape Delgado) as far as Kipini (soutli of Wito). This line 
encloses a coast of ten nautical miles inland for the whole 
distance. The northern boundary includes Kau ; north 
of Kipini, both Powers recognize as belonging to the Sul- 
tan of Zanzibar the stations of Kisimayu, Brava, Merka, 
and Makdishu (Magadoxo), each with a land circuit of ten 
nautical miles, and Warsheikh with a land circuit of five 
nautical miles. 

II. Great Britain engages herself to support those nego- 
tiations of Germany with the Sultan which have for their 
object the farming out ( Verpachtung) of the customs in 
the harbors of Dar-es-Salaam and Pangani to the German 
East African Association, on the payment by the Association 
to the Sultan of an annual guaranteed sum of money. 

III. Both Powers agree to undertake a delimitation of 
their respective spheres of influence in this portion of the 
East African Continent. This territory shall be consid- 
ered as bounded on the south by the Povuma Piver, and 
on the north by a line, commencing from the mouth of the 
Tana Piver, following the course of this river or its tribu- 
taries, to the intersection of the Equator with the 38th 
degree of east longitude, and from thence continued in a 
straight line to the intersection of the 1st degree of north 
latitude with the 37th degree of east longitude. The line 
of demarcation shall start from the mouth of the river Wanga, 
or Umbe, and follow a straight course to Lake Jipe (south- 
east of Kilima-njaro), along the eastern shore and round 
the northern shore of the lake, across the river Lumi, pass- 
ing between the territories of Taveta and Chagga, and 
then along the northern slope of the Kilima-njaro range 
and continued in a straight line to the point on the eastern 
shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza which is intersected by the 
1st degree of south latitude. 

Great Britain engages herself to make no territorial ac- 
quisitions, to accept no Protectorates, and not to compete 
with the spread of German influence to the south of this 
line, whilst Germany engages herself to observe a similar 
abstinence in the territories to the north of this line, 



A POLITICAL WARNING. 12 7 

IV. Great Britain will use her influence to promote the 
conclusion of a friendly agreement concerning the existing 
claims of the Sultan of Zanzibar and the German East 
African Association, on the Kilima-njaro territory. 

V. Both Powers recognize as belonging to Wito the 
coast stretching from the north of Kipini to the north end 
of Man da Bay. 

VI. Great Britain and Germany will conjointly call 
upon the Sultan of Zanzibar to recognize the General Act 
of the Berlin Conference, save and except the existing 
rights of His Highness as laid down in Art. I. of the Act. 

VII. Germany binds herself to become a party to the 
Note signed by Great Britain and France on 10th March, 
1862, in regard to the recognition of the independence of 
Zanzibar. 

This is the only document which can have any 
validity, and such German claims— outside the limit 
here assigned — as are represented on the newer 
German maps, are to be treated as mere charto- 
graphical flourishes. Encouraged, however, by this 
success in securing territory in Africa, and without 
stopping to use or even to proclaim their pro- 
tectorate over more than a fraction of the petty 
states comprised within it, the Germans instantly 
despatched expedition after expedition to secure 
further conquest in the remoter and unappropriated 
districts. Dr. Karl Peters himself led one large expe- 
dition ; Dr. Jiihlke negotiated agreements with the 
tribes on the distant Somal coast; and other explorers 
brought back rare and heavy spoil — on paper — to Ber- 
lin. So the swallowing up of Africa goes on. The 
slices cut are daily becoming bigger, and in a few 
years more not a crumb of the loaf will remain for 
those who own it now. The poor Sultan of Zanzibar, 
who used to boast himself lord of the whole interior, 
woke up, after the London Convention, to find that his 
African kingdom consisted of a ten-mile-wide strip 
of coast-line, extending from Kipini to the Miningani 
River. Even this has already been sold or leased 



128 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

to the English and Germans, and nothing now remains 
to His Highness bat a few small islands. 

Since turning her attention towards Africa,Germany 
has not only looked well after new territory, but seized 
the opportunit} 7 to inspect and readjust the title-deeds 
to her other African property. We find a new treaty 
concluded in 1885 between her and the British Pro- 
tectorate in the Niger regarding the Cameroons; 
another towards the close of the same year with France 
on the same subject, and securing rights to Malimba 
and Great Batonga; and a third with Portugal in 
1887, defining, in the interest of the latter, the bound- 
aries of Angola, and ceding to Germany, as a quid-pro- 
quo, an acknowledgment of the claim of the Germans — 
which, of course, England repudiates — to East Central 
Africa from the coast to the south end of Tanganyika 
and Lake Nyassa, as far as the latitude of the Rovuma. 

These facts prove the genuine political activity of 
at least one great European power, and offer a pre- 
cedent to England, which, in one respect at least, she 
would do well to copy. Her title-deeds, and those of 
certain districts in which she is concerned, are not in 
such perfect order as to justify the apathy which exists 
at present, and her interests in the country are now 
too serious to be the prey of unchallenged ambitions, or 
left at the mercy of any casual turn of the wheel of 
politics. 

Thanks, partly, to the recent seizure by Portugal of 
the little Zambesi steamer belonging to the African 
Lakes company — on the plea that vessels trading on 
Portuguese waters must be owned by Portuguese sub- 
jects, and fly the Portuguese flag — and to influential 
deputations to head-quarters on the part of the vari- 
ous Missions, the Foreign Office is beginning to be 
alive to the state of affairs in East Central Africa. 
The annexation of Matabeleland will be a chief item 
on the programme with which it is hoped the Govern- 
ment will shortly surprise us ; but, what is of greater 
significance, it will probably include a declaration of 



A POLITICAL WARNING. 129 

the Zambesi as an open river, and the abolition or 
serious restriction of the present customs tariff. Im- 
portant as these things are, however, they affect but 
slightly the two supreme English interests in East 
Central Africa — the suppression of the slave-trade 
and the various missionary and industrial enterprises. 
The most eager among the supporters of these higher 
interests have never ventured to press upon Govern- 
ment anything so pronounced as that England should 
declare a Protectorate over the Upper Shire and 
Nyassa districts ; but they do contend, and with every 
reason, for the delimitation of part of this region as a 
" Sphere of British Influence." 

Granting even that the shadowy claims of Germany 
and Portugal to the eastern shore of Lake Nyassa are 
to be respected, there remain the whole western coast 
of the Lake, and the regions of the Upper Shire* which 
are reached directly from the waters of the Zam- 
besi without trespassing on the soil of any nation. 
These regions are not even claimed at present by any 
one, while by every right of discovery and occupa- 
tion — by every right, in fact, except that of formal 
acknowledgment — they are already British. It will 
be an oversight most culpable and inexcusable if this 
great theatre of British missionary and trading ac- 
tivity should be allowed to be picked up by any pass- 
ing traveller, or become the property of whatever 
European power had sufficient effrontery at this late 
day to wave its flag over it. The thriving settle- 
ments, the schools and churches, the roads and trad- 
ing-stations, of Western Nyassa-land are English. 
And yet it is neither asked that they should be 
claimed by England, annexed by England, nor pro- 
tected by England. Those whose inspirations and 
whose lives have created this oasis in the desert, plead 
only that no intruder now should be allowed to undo 
their labor or idly reap its fruits. Here is one spot, 
at least, on the Dark Continent, which is being kept 
pure and clean. It is now within the power of the 



130 TROPICAL AFRICA. 

English Government to mark it off before the world 
as henceforth sacred ground. To-morrow, it may be 
too late. 



X. 

A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE. 

The Lake Nyassa region of Africa knows only 
two seasons — the rainy and the dry. The former 
begins with great regularity on the opening days of 
December, and closes towards the endof April ; while 
during the dry season, which follows for the next 
six months, the sun is almost never darkened with a 
cloud. At Blantyre, on the Shire Highlands, the 
rainfall averages fifty inches ; at Bandawe, on Lake 
Nyassa, a register of eighty-six inches is counted a 
somewhat dryish season. 

The barometer in tropical countries is much more 
conservative of change than in northern latitudes, 
and the annual variation at Lake Nyassa is only 
about half an inch or from 28*20 inches in Novem- 
ber to 28*70 inches in June. The diurnal variation, 
according to Mr. Stewart, is rarely more than twenty- 
hundredths of an inch. 

The average temperature for the year at Blantyre, 
where the elevation is about three thousand feet 
above sea-level, is 50° Fahr., but the mercury has 
been known to stand ten degrees lower, and on one 
exceptional occasion it fell 2 W below freezing point. 
At Lake Nyassa, half the height of Blantyre, 85° 
Fahr. is a common figure for mid-day in the hottest 
month. (November) in the year, while the average 
night-temperature of the coldest month (May) is 
about 60°. The lowest registered temperature on 
the Lake has been 54°, and the highest — though this 
is extremely rare — 100° Fahr. When the Living- 
stonia Mission occupied the promontory of Cape 



A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE. 



131 



Maclear, at the southern end of Nyassa, in 1880, 
one of the then staff, Mr. Harkess, had the energy 
to keep a systematic record of the temperature, 
and I am indebted to his notebook for the following 
table. The figures represent observations taken 
at 6 a.m., 12 noon, and 6 p.m. A dash indicates 
that the observation was omitted for the hour cor- 
responding. The wet bulb reads on an average 10 
degrees lower. 



TABLE OF TEMPERATURES AT LAKE NYASSA. 


1 


May 
70 


June July 


Aug. 


Sept. 


10 


May June July 


Aug. 


Sept. 


62 


64 


67 


68 


67 


68 


66 


61 







80 


75 


73 


74 


79 




75 


75 


— 


81 


80 


2 


75 


76 


74 


73 


75 


11 


74 


73 


71 


— 


77 





60 


64 


68 


69 


69 


66 





62 


70 


c 


77 


78 


74 


— 


79 




75 


76 


76 


79 


79 


3 


— 


73 


— 


74 


75 
66 


12 


— 


75 


73 


— 


79 


67 


65 


62 


65 


— 


66 


69 


65 







76 


78 


74 


— 


75 




75 


75 


77 


81 


— 


4 


76 


74 


70 


— 


74 


13 


71 


72 


— 


76 


— 


681 


64 




62 


71 


65 







70 


72 




79 


71 


73 


— 


77 




76 


73 




79 


5 


78 


70 


— 


— 


79 


14 


74 


— 




77 


78 


68 


64 


63 


76 


— 


67 


63 




68 


71 




79 


74 


— 


— 


— 




73 


74 




77 


81 


6 


76 


74 


71 


— 


— 


15 


71 
68 


64 




75 


78 





64 


64 


70 


65 





66 


72 




75i 


77 


72 


77 


81 




76 


74 


— 


— 


75 


7 


75 


76 


74 


— 


77 


16 


75 
71 


72 


76 


— 


77 


66 


67 


64 


61 


72 


64 


68 


87 







79 


78 


71 


79 


80 




77 


74 


79 


75 


79 


8 


75 


75 


71 


— 


77 


17 


75 
68 


70 


78 


73 


77 


65 


66 


64 





70 


64 


65 










74 


74 


— 


— 


80 




78 


74 


77 


— 


— 


9 


74 


74 


71 


— 


81 


18 


77 


72 


68 


76 


76 


68 


65 


62 


70 


72 


71 


68 


73 




77 


76 


75 


79 


81 




80 


74 


75 


75 


78 




— 


73 


73 


— 


77 




78 


72 


76 


72 


77 



132 



TROPICAL AFRICA. 



19 


May 


June July Aug. 


Sept. 


26 


May 
67 


June 


July 


Aug. 


Sept. | 

! 


65 


64 


69 








63 


67 


64 




74 


— 


77 


75 






75* 


75 


79 


72 


— 


20 


76 
63 


77 


79 


74 


75 1 


27 


75 


— 


76 


73 





67 


68 


69 





65 


65 


73 




74 


76 


76 


— 


82 | 




77 


72 


74 


77 


84 ! 


21 


76 


74 


74 


75 


80 


28 


74 


— 


71 


77 


82 


67 


65 


64 


64 


71 


70 





65 


70 


73 




75 


72 


75 


— 


85 




78 


72 


76 


79 


81 


22 


75 


68 


75 


75 


78 

72 


29 


77 
68 


— 


74 


78 


79 


70 


63 


67 





63 


65 





68 




75 


75 


78 


81 




80 


71 


72 


76 


82 : 


23 




65 


76 


75 


79 


30 


77 


72 


75 


— 


80 


58 


65 





70 





64 


63 


67 


74 






67 


77 


79 


82 




75 


74 


78 


79 


82 ! 


24 




70 


74 


77 


78 


31 


76 


— 


75 


77 


80 


— 1 62 


64 


68 


73 


67 




65 


66 






76 


— 


76 


69 


82 




74 




76 


79 




25 


76 


— 


74 


66 


81 




74 




76 


83 




67 


61 


66 


63 


74 














77 


— 


74 


75 


— 














75 


— 


75 


71 


78 












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